Following Guards

edvai

Hey all, I am pretty new with foundrying, so looking for a little advice.

In my story, you meet up with an old friend who's city is under siege. We need to clear through the village and seek refuge inside the castle. He single handedly slaughters 10 minion archers when you first see him, we're ready to go on an epic quest together and.... He dies in our first encounter.

I think, okay, I'll make him standard with two guards, I can work that into the storyline. In the first encounter, his two guards die, he dies in the second.

Okay, fine! He'll be in a scouting party of 4 guard minions plus his Lieutenant! I can work this in! Two minions die in the first encounter, 2 in the next, My pal dies in the 3rd and the Lieutenant dies in the 4th.

These are not overly tough fights these guys are dying in! For the most part they are standard encounters, the first one is a hard one, but there is freaking 6 of us! How do I keep this guy alive?!

rogu3ish

I'm doing something similar, and I ran into the same problem (when testing in the Foundry that is). I built in an excuse to my NPC for them to 'disappear' (in case they die) then place another encounter that spawns in a particular spot if both their first incarnation and the encounter in that spot dies. So basically they reappear at some point in the future, if and only if they died previously.

This was doable for one 'reset' of the guard, but I wasn't sure how to make a third or fourth incarnation if all the previous ones died.

All that said, my guard NPC appears much less fragile on Live...could be I'm just more proactive with fighting there too. If you're using Kill Target, keep in mind that will kill your Guard too. I did that a couple times and thought the guard was just super wimpy. Turns out I was killing her along with the aggro mobs!

[Edit: typo]

antonkyle

In my opinion they should add an animation for an npc that looks like it is fighting but doesn't take or do any damage. (nine times out of ten, problem solved.)

We can hope.

Best way I found was to respawn and remove the old every couple of fights, if you use reach to trigger the respawn it is less visible because often they are behind you following.

You can judge it by going through on god mode and seeing how far the guard gets with you not fighting. If you use Hard guards to this affect you can have 'stacked encounters' which is a dirty word but used like this it is pretty good in my opinion.

eldarth

I know mobs will respawn if set to Disappear When Never -- it also works for guards -- it may take a minute or so to respawn though. They also respawn at their original spawn point, so maybe if that were a central hub area?

pris23

eldarth wrote: »

I know mobs will respawn if set to Disappear When Never -- it also works for guards -- it may take a minute or so to respawn though. They also respawn at their original spawn point, so maybe if that were a central hub area?

I didn't know that. I have been doing it the hard way I guess with despawning and respawning at certain check points, lol. This is good to know.

celantra

Resurrect your guard after each battle. Regardless of where he falls you will have your companion to move on with you. Just make sure that you disappear the old version.

eldarth

celantra wrote: »

Resurrect your guard after each battle. Regardless of where he falls you will have your companion to move on with you. Just make sure that you disappear the old version.

Your guard is a devout follower of Tyr (or Tempus, or ...) and must pay homage after every battle.
But, then you do need a priest/alter of (insert deity here) where you can despawn/spawn.

Although, I think if guards set to Follow/Never Disappear respawn they may just teleport to PC to "catch up" to them.

edvai

Hm, I do have the guards set to disappear never, infact, all of my encounters are set that way, they don't seem to respawn.
I think I'll have to go the route of refreshing him after every fight. He can get up and say something like "Ah, Meerly a flesh wound" or something.

I agree though, I would love to have someone who looks like they are fighting but deliver and receive 0 damage, that would be splendid.

jedite2012

want the guards to attack you? set them to fight to submission, they will fight you instead

edvai

jedite2012 wrote: »

want the guards to attack you? set them to fight to submission, they will fight you instead

Can't set them to fight to submission because their behavior is already set to Follow and you cant have two behaviors. Fight to submission would work great though if I could use it.

eldarth

edvai wrote: »

Can't set them to fight to submission because their behavior is already set to Follow and you cant have two behaviors. Fight to submission would work great though if I could use it.

Do you get an Encounter Complete with Fight to Submission? You could then despawn fighters and spawn followers?