I'm one of those old geezers who's been with D&D since 'Keep on the Borderlands'; but while I generally like the way things have been implemented in NWN, I've missed the opportunity to employ hirelings--those essential little buggers every character likes to have in tow to shine their shoes, cook their meals, or tote their loads. So as a bit of a dalliance, I've created three basic hirelings here--a torchbearer, a porter, and a security guard--which you can use or modify. More can certainly be contrived, and perhaps I'll expand the pack in a future update. The 'sycophant' springs readily to mind. Enjoy!
I realized that I wanted to get some hirelings into my recent designs - this looks like just the thing. Will vote once I get them into my modules. Thanks!
Posted by McV at 2008-11-26 23:15:03 Voted 10.00 on 11/26/08
These are fantastic - exactly what I needed for the "dungeon crawl" mod I'm building. With a few modifications I had everything I needed to go from "loyal soldier follower" to "mercenary." Nice work.
Posted by AtomicWhop at 2005-09-17 09:17:21 Voted 10.00 on 09/17/05
I'm one of them old geezers too, and this does bring back alot of memories of my old pencil and paper days...Good work!!
Posted by CutterShane at 2005-04-25 13:41:23 Voted 8.50 on 04/25/05
Sweet! This really does enhance the gaming experience. I followed your suggestion and created a "hiring hall" where you ring the gong and it will spawn whichever hireling is missing. I'm planning on adding more classes as well.
One suggestion ... as they level up, they should charge more based on their level ... or do they already?
Posted by Etarnon at 2004-10-21 08:48:00 Voted 9.00 on 08/24/04
I've modded this to include Merc swordsmen, NPC barbarians, and a few others in progress.
Bug report: If you hire the porter, and then take his pack and go offline (without dismissing him) he becomes hireable, but without his pack. Thus, people unaware will hire him, and waste money, since he can no longer carry things. (But if the original owner comes back, he works as usual, which is fine.)
We worked around this by telling people, if you see the porter walking around, don't hire him, just go to the Hirelings 'R' Us, shop, and get a new one.
Great code, allows parties of 6 npcs plus a player, just smashing for hunting bandits. And they get their own XP, so it is just a case of who gets the hits in. If a PC takes these guys out, it costs, but it's a buffer. Not a big XP powergaming exploit, since the player gets none for the hirelings killing off bad guys. (which I am all for players earning XP, not soaking it off of henchmen.)
Works real well, and one of the most used tools on my server, besides Tigsen's pack oxen, and Oxen trade routes.
Great stuff.
- Etarnon
Loremaster, Land of Etarnon (roleplay)
Posted by Etarnon at 2004-10-21 08:47:00 Voted 9.00 on 08/24/04
I've modded this to include Merc swordsmen, NPC barbarians, and a few others in progress.
Bug report: If you hire the porter, and then take his pack and go offline (without dismissing him) he becomes hireable, but without his pack. Thus, people unaware will hire him, and waste money, since he can no longer carry things. (But if the original owner comes back, he works as usual, which is fine.)
We worked around this by telling people, if you see the porter walking around, don't hire him, just go to the Hirelings 'R' Us, shop, and get a new one.
Great code, allows parties of 6 npcs plus a player, just smashing for hunting bandits. And they get their own XP, so it is just a case of who gets the hits in. If a PC takes these guys out, it costs, but it's a buffer. Not a big XP powergaming exploit, since the player gets none for the hirelings killing off bad guys. (which I am all for players earning XP, not soaking it off of henchmen.)
Works real well, and one of the most used tools on my server, besides Tigsen's pack oxen, and Oxen trade routes.
Great stuff.
- Etarnon
Loremaster, Land of Etarnon (roleplay)
Posted by Etarnon at 2004-08-24 21:27:24 Voted 9.00 on 08/24/04
Posted by Etarnon at 2004-08-24 21:26:00 Voted 9.00 on 08/24/04
I liked this a lot. We are already using this for the Land of Etarnon AD&D 1st ed server, it fits right in there with the henchmen, and hirelings feel. Found it earlier tonight, and it's already a smash hit.
I liked that the conversations are really simple, not like some of the hard to use henchmen scripts out there that are hard to work with, and have exploits.
It was nice also, that if say, the porter dies, you can get the stuff he was carrying off of him, and spread it out among the party, though I would like to see maybe some alignment or XP loss, if you lose a hireling, because I have seen players march 'em into their death, with no real loss.
One note, for the casual, non-scripting user...if you use custom torches for the torchbearer..(hc_torch, etc.), you must change the tag on the kid's scripts attached to his convo, or else, though he's carrying 25 torches, he's looking for specific tags, to see if he has any left, and won't find yours.
I put this into my mod, works real well, except I had to change my torch tags to work with my custom hc_torches.
(Using my own modded HCR hb torch scripts, though I liked that yours seemed really simple and clean)
And, I will use your idea of reusable guys (since when you dismiss, these guys destroy themselves.) Probably a "Hirelings 'R' Us" shop with a pullchain to summon whichever specific one you want, because respawning em from DM interface after death / dismissal is just a hassle.
I'm also going to do a lantern-bearer, for those nifty CEP swinging and frosted lanterns. Yeah, this gets my vote, for sure.
Great work, man, adds a lot of flavor, and rounds out those hard core dungeon parties.
It took me all of 10 minutes to install. Just smashing.
This is a compilation of the old system into a single score. There were 11 that made this score of 8.45 then rounded to 8.
Posted by Jeff Peterson ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-04-11 05:32:00
I don't see any reason why you couldn't create a custom encounter to spawn one or more of the hirelings at a location. But then they wouldn't respawn until they died, and perhaps what you want is a script that will keep a steady supply of these guys at some central location, so that many players can add them to their groups.
I'd say the easiest way, in that case, would be to put them in a smaller area, such as a bar or inn, then run a script on that area's OnEnter which 1) looks to see whether a creature with tag "Porter", etc. is in the area, and 2) if not, creates one (using the resref, of course) at a designated waypoint. It's actually a fairly simple operation, but feel free to send me an email if you need any assistance.
Posted by PaddytheSlayer ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-04-11 04:33:00
Great idea, this, I'm planning to use it in my Mod. Works really well and an excellent piece of scripting i must say. One point though. As my Module is PW, i could really do with having these Hirelings being respawnable, they dont at the moment i guess due to the custom on spawn script. Any way i can ammend the script so the encounter triggers spawn them rather than having to place them in Module ? Any help would be appreciated as my scripting power is'nt great. Still got my thumbs up though : )
Posted by Dr. Benway ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-04-05 08:55:00
Man, this script is ab-so-lute-ly grand! Thanx ; )
Posted by War Machine ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-04-03 21:24:00
Just tested out the hireling script as I need hireable bodyguards for a mod I'm building. Perfect! Thanks for this great contribution.
I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one.
Posted by Jeff Peterson ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-03-31 19:13:00
Tim-very easy. Download the .erf file and import it into the module of your choice. It will tell you it can't find something like timelib.ncs, but just click "yes" and move ahead. After the import, you'll find the three hirelings in the custom NPCs menu, and you can just plop them down wherever you want. Nothin' more to do.
Posted by Tim ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-03-31 13:30:00
your script sounds very interesting but it lacks directions i dont know what to do with this file to get it to work. Any help you wish to give me would be greatly appreitiated.
Posted by Alisttair ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-03-25 18:38:00
Thank you oh so much for this. It helps excellently for my mod. Keep up doing good stuff like this. I give it a 10.
Posted by Nalora ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-03-07 05:39:00
Thanks for these! They work well, and add a nice dimension
to my module. Appreciate the work, and for making a non
scripting idjut like myself look good.
Nalora
Posted by 69_Jeremy_69 ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-03-05 14:36:00
Cool script I was about to write one a few days ago. I
totally overlooked the set listening pattern. GREAT IDEA!!
Of course I'm gonna have to heavily mod the script for my
world though. But nice code and good idea. If it would let
me vote I would :)
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