Hirelings Fixed????

[ThomasMink]

-this one really frustrates me - unless you have your hireling on passive setting, they rush off and attack whatever enemy happens to be near by. Then they return to your group bring whatever mobs they encoutered with them

I HATE this! It even happens when I tell the hireling to attack a specific mob. He or she runs out there, takes a swing, then runs back. It's like.. "***?". After that, whether or not they swing at anything during the fight without being told seems sporadic and random.

[Rizzyn]

Coin for Coin, Hireling Healers are a better deal than wands or scrolls, that said, they do need some management, and it will depend on which "Personality" you decide to invest you're coin in. I'll try to give examples, and maybe some folks will recognize similar behaviors.

My usual partner and I run a Paladin and a Rogue, and obviously, my Rogue is the squishier of the two, but we hate to blow her Lay-On-Hands on maintaining my HP when I get too far into the mix to get out. I am the primary DPS, while she intimis and gets them to turn their backs, but I tend to pay for it in hits. At any rate, we always run with a hireling apiece. On Lam, where we're capped, we tend to run Albus -- the Favored Soul, and Wyoh -- the Cleric. Albus seems to do well, mainly because he seems more capable of keeping his distance than Wyoh. Wyoh gets in too close, and gets killed by mobs. It takes management, you may have to plant her at a distance, so she runs in heals, and runs back. Neither are terribly aggressive...BUT...

There are a set of other Hirelings, the Favored Souls, that are very aggressive and attack even on defense -- offense being their defense, and sometimes wind up spamming damage spells with no enemies around. If the aggression is ok in a quest, they're ok, but if not, they're a pain. Klin is a Cleric 19, his 19th level FvS associate is one such crazed FvS, very hard to manage if you're trying to take a measured approach. Klin worked great, however, though there seems to be a problem with some Summoned Beasts that must come up flagged as injured, and are sometimes the target of constant healing. Klin kept his distance, and even placed farther away, ran in to heal and ran back. Most time, you really have to use the few commands at your disposal to control their activity--as necessarily limited as it is, but you are sometimes at the mercy of their "personality", which is sometimes hinted at in their individual write-ups.

The Drow Favored Souls, for example, as Hirelings are almost always aggro, even on Defense. It takes a bit of testing to find the ones that work best for you, depending on the quest and your own style of play, but they will always require some level of direct management to get the best use out of them. At the end of the day, no Hireling Healer is going to be as good as a live one.

[PestWulf]

I personally think you should remove their Wet Bar. Maloren, the low level hireling who I now call Moron, is horrible for this.

He is down about 1/3 of his blue bar, so he still has 2/3's left. I tell him to heal my ally..he takes a drink. I tell him to heal my ally...he takes a drink.

It's obvious that the hirelings have created a drinking game based on how often we tell them to do things. I am not amused by this. So that is fully understood how reprehensible this behavior is, I have taken to carrying around a few of his contracts..even though I normally use much higher level ones, and when I'm feeling poor, I go into the Seigebreaker quest, summon Moron and take him to the latrine and make him sit the entire adventure in the poo.

Oddly, this seems to be very therapeutic when it comes to the frustrations that hirelings bring to the table.

I would also like to suggest that you don't allow commands to cancel each other out. Say I just lost 1/3 of my hp bar...the hireling may or may not decide to heal me at that level, so I tell him to heal me. If he decided to heal me anyway, his brain explodes and his spell fizzles. He then waits several seconds to recover and if you dare talk to him during that time, you are guaranteed to have his next spell fizzle as well.

I begin to think that the only mercenaries that the Hireling Vendors employ are those that have flunked out of merc school.