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[StagnantSoul]

Woah. I want one now.

[Robsoie]

I was thinking of roleplaying a merchant, trading stuff from towns to towns as a change of the usual adventurer.
After giving a try i ran into a problem i have no idea how to work around : escort.

My goal was to get a soldier or two to escort me from town to town, with my character not fighting any battle, in a similar way as merchants comes in the Fortress mode.

But the problem is that i decided to go with a regular character, choosing Peasant, not a kind of superhuman like Hero or Demigod

And the problem in such case is that none wants to join you , the only reply is "Ha! Such enthousiasm from one such as yourself".
I even tried to select the "someone important" start that makes you a heartperson to make sure my guy was known enough, but to no avail, this problem is basically nullifying the effort and only making sure such character is going to be easy target for bogeymen because he's not going to be a bandit hunter, a goblin crusher or whatever else would make people willing to join.

Is there any way to hire people that are unwilling to join or is it just not really possible to get escort with peasant level of characters at the start ?

[Socrates1337]

You probably just have to do a bunch of quests to get a reputation.

[jax3639]

I was thinking of roleplaying a merchant, trading stuff from towns to towns as a change of the usual adventurer.
After giving a try i ran into a problem i have no idea how to work around : escort.

My goal was to get a soldier or two to escort me from town to town, with my character not fighting any battle, in a similar way as merchants comes in the Fortress mode.

But the problem is that i decided to go with a regular character, choosing Peasant, not a kind of superhuman like Hero or Demigod

And the problem in such case is that none wants to join you , the only reply is "Ha! Such enthousiasm from one such as yourself".
I even tried to select the "someone important" start that makes you a heartperson to make sure my guy was known enough, but to no avail, this problem is basically nullifying the effort and only making sure such character is going to be easy target for bogeymen because he's not going to be a bandit hunter, a goblin crusher or whatever else would make people willing to join.

Is there any way to hire people that are unwilling to join or is it just not really possible to get escort with peasant level of characters at the start ?

increasing your empathy might help

[Robsoie]

That's unfortunate, it's then not going to be really possible to play this way without playing the guy like a regular DF adventurer to get more fame through quests unrelated to my character roleplay, or without using a hero/demigod starter to get enough point to increase the ally-influencing stats.

I hope one day it will be possible to hire people (so all those useless stuff like the coins you can collect could have a use) instead of asking them to join adventuring depending on your fame+stats levels.

[Pirate Bob]

That's unfortunate, it's then not going to be really possible to play this way without playing the guy like a regular DF adventurer to get more fame through quests unrelated to my character roleplay, or without using a hero/demigod starter to get enough point to increase the ally-influencing stats.

I hope one day it will be possible to hire people (so all those useless stuff like the coins you can collect could have a use) instead of asking them to join adventuring depending on your fame+stats levels.

"Ability to hire bodyguards" is listed in the "Adventure Role: Trader" plans on the development page. 

Perhaps more of a problem to being a trader right now is that all shops will buy/sell goods at the same prices.  Toady does plan to implement realistic supply and demand eventually, but right now sites just supply goods based on the local resources, but at fixed prices.  It is therefore not possible to make a profit as a trader.  You would have to do this as complete roleplaying, where you would perhaps take a few of the free items from the keep/warehouses etc. as "payment" for your delivery.  Maybe you already know this, and that's what you meant by "roleplaying"?  Just don't want you to be disappointed...

Also, can anyone confirm that the size of ambushes is no longer proportional to the size of your party?  In DF2012 (or maybe it was even before that) if you had more party members the randomly generated ambushes would just be larger, so getting NPCs to protect you was not really feasible (at least beyond getting them to distract the ambushers while you run away - having your companions win a fight without you participating would be extremely unlikely).  Now ambushes come from actual armies moving around the map, and I am pretty sure their size has nothing to do with your party size, but I am not sure of that.

Now if you put a couple of points to observer (I think this is what's required, and I always do it) then you should be able to spot all the armies moving around the map and avoid them pretty easily, so you could probably avoid fighting altogether if you wanted.  But this would be pretty boring.

[Robsoie]

Thanks for the confirmation for the hireable escorts, it should allow for more than classic solo adventuring with a couple of clueless soldiers that joined you to die, as i can imagine players accessing lord position and really building armies (i mean more than the 3 or 4 max guys you can get) by paying more and more troops and fighting enemy fortresses and town for expanding your influence.

Yes, i knew there is no economy yet in the DF worlds and indeed it was the point of the "roleplay" : making it so trading and economy mattered, but without escort it's just a quick way to lose characters with all those bogeymen

[Pirate Bob]

How good would a masterwork platinum toy hammer be as a weapon?

The platinum toy hammer would be OK as a weapon, but I am pretty sure masterwork quality would do nothing for you (I think that only applies to attacks with weapons) and I'm not sure if it's small size would result in a contact area as small as whips, warhammers, or arrows.  Even if it did, contact areas below 10 (warhammers have this) are all pretty much the same for armor penetration due to rounding that occurs. 

The reason whips have superior armor penetration compared to warhammers is not because they have contact area 1, but because they have a 5x velocity multiplier compared to 2x for warhammers.  Damage is directly proportional to weapon momentum.  Momentum is of course mass times velocity, so increasing the velocity increases damage (and armor penetration) by the same amount.  Increasing mass will result in increased momentum, but the velocity of the swing also decreases with mass, resulting in overall momentum increasing somewhat, but less than linearly, with mass (Urist da Vinci has a post with exact numbers somewhere).  Anyhow, your platinum toy hammer will get a velocity multiplier of 1x, making it significantly less effective than a whip or warhammer.  If you could get an artifact platinum whip or warhammer, now that would be truly fearsome (although ordinary whips are already ridiculous against humanoids, so I'm not sure how much better a platinum one would really be).

TL:DR - don't bother trying to make a platinum toy hammer, unless you just want to do it for the lols.

[Pirate Bob]

Thanks for the confirmation for the hireable escorts, it should allow for more than classic solo adventuring with a couple of clueless soldiers that joined you to die, as i can imagine players accessing lord position and really building armies (i mean more than the 3 or 4 max guys you can get) by paying more and more troops and fighting enemy fortresses and town for expanding your influence.

Yes, i knew there is no economy yet in the DF worlds and indeed it was the point of the "roleplay" : making it so trading and economy mattered, but without escort it's just a quick way to lose characters with all those bogeymen

I usually don't have too much trouble avoiding bogeymen by just keeping a close eye on the sun and only traveling during the daytime.  I more often than not adventure without escort, and rarely am attacked by them.  Now that Dwarves and Elves have sites you can stay at, it is pretty easy to always reach the next town within a day.  This should be even better with the update to 40.15 that bogeymen don't appear in owned sites.  Then again, if you are an unarmed merchant, getting attacked by bogeymen once is more than enough...

Also, if you want an escort just to ward off bogeymen, I think you might be able to get one of the drunks from a tavern to follow you around even if you have no fame, but I'm not sure.  There also might be peasants willing to follow anyone (there used to be in 2012) but you have to ask a lot of people as most peasants aren't interested in adventuring at all.  You are definitely correct that the guards won't follow a peasant with no fame (unless you put a few points to social awareness and/or empathy).

[Bloax]

Travelling/sleeping by the edges of oceans is a foolproof way of avoiding boogeymen.

[Robsoie]

The difficulty is that towns are not all close enough to be reached in less than 1 day, and if you're not lucky enough for the worldgen to have placed mountains/beachs somewhere on the path, your chances of attracting bogeyman are high if you're travelling alone.

Without talking about animals ambushes that happens from time to time (giant dingos can be fun) , and if you use a weak character start instead of hero/demigod, being alone is as good in those situations as facing bogeymen.

I'll have to check for peasants/drunks, with the usual soldiers available for my previous characters i never thought about asking those to join, hopefully it will work and solve the escort problem (well at least the bogeyman one, as a pack of giant dingos vs a couple of peasants .. )

[Robsoie]

Oh wow, i loaded my peasant , asked to the first guy in the hamlet i saw, a planter and


it worked !
Amazing, 2 peasants vs the world !


Thanks again for the suggestion, i didn't thought non-soldiers civilians would ever accept when you are a no-fame peasant yourself !

[pisskop]

Oh wow, i loaded my peasant , asked to the first guy in the hamlet i saw, a planter and


it worked !
Amazing, 2 peasants vs the world !


Thanks again for the suggestion, i didn't thought non-soldiers civilians would ever accept when you are a no-fame peasant yourself !

:|  Yes.  Up to two with zero fame, even with no skill/points into empathy/social awareness.  Dont expect them to be much use or have much moral fiber.  Or a weapon.  Give them one of those, even if its just a stray bolt.

[Robsoie]

meat shield is still a shield when it comes to running away

[Nikow]

Give them some items. They will start like you, and will join to you. Without killing, just by talking, you can take off rulers. Give them just some stuff, even from They own cabinets.