Remove/Change the escort missions

[Velikolepni]

I loathe the escort missions. They annoy me to no end and seem designed to press all my buttons: I want to save the escort since doing so provides useful benefits, but in so many occasions their stupidity prevents this completely. There so many situations where their doom is almost guaranteed - a dragon appears and breathes on them and bam! No reward for you. (And you can't always run forward and clean up since depending on level layout their movement is completely inpredictable. "The portal is to the northwest" they say and then proceed to go southeast in some roundabout way.)

Basically, I would suggest that they be completely removed. If they have to stay, then make the rewards purely monetary so that it's not such a pain if they die. Furthermore, just add three trainers:
one in Zigur dealing with anti-magic/nature talents,
one in in Lost Hope dealing with combat talents,
one in Angolwen dealing with the rest.

Then make it so that one can buy talents from them 9 times in total for a total price of about 3-4 thousand gold. There - frustration gone. (Why in Fearscape's name do I have to save a Loremaster to learn how to disarm people? Any random bandit seems to be able to do it - they must have learned it somewhere!)

[Zizzo]

You would probably be interested in my No Escort Quests addon.

[starsapphire]

Escort is not designed to be able to finish them all.
Yes, you can't save everyone, nor should you

[Velikolepni]

Escort is not designed to be able to finish them all.
Yes, you can't save everyone, nor should you

The proposed change would not modify that - you don't save them, you don't get the gold/item. What it would do, is make it less painful to the player if the escorts die. I know that roguelikes have RNG, but having very important rewards that modify the player's character immensely and permanently rely on such a flimsy mechanic is horrible (and just makes me want to throw the computer through the window). Many classes benefit immensely from getting a single point in Dreamwalk, or Nature's touch or the Light category or tinkers through escorts. I've lost count of the number of guides that recommend savescumming or using mods in order to select the escort that one wants. The player behavior that escorts encourage is clearly degenerate and the problem was fixed in EoR! If the proposed change were implemented then the whole mess could be balanced by giving the various abilities appropriate prices. The mechanic already exists in the game for Mindstar/Staff mastery, why not for those?

Also while we're at it, can at least the Sun Paladin's Chant rewards be reworked? Currently it does not work properly if the player character is an Anorithil or Sun Paladin.

[Velikolepni]

You would probably be interested in my No Escort Quests addon.

I would, but the rewards are very important for many characters. Just removing them makes some classes much more annoying to play.

[Zizzo]

Escort is not designed to be able to finish them all.
Yes, you can't save everyone, nor should you

Yes, that's one of the addon's Frequently Asked Questions. For convenience, I'll copy the answer here:

You're not supposed to be able to save all the escorts anyway, you know.

Hence this addon, frankly — I mean, why would I want to take a quest that I'm literally meant to fail?

I would, but the rewards are very important for many characters. Just removing them makes some classes much more annoying to play.

(shrug) Fair enough. Myself, I long ago concluded that, since those rewards aren't reliably obtainable, I needed to proceed on the assumption that I wasn't going to get any of them.

[starsapphire]

The Light escort is going to be removed in 1.6
I don't know if it will also happen to Tinker escort, but Darkgod once said escorts reward should have similar power level