ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Aaand after losing one too many escorts to a horde from which it was literaly impossible to defend them, I'm officially done with it. My new No Escorts Quests addon clears the precomputed-at-birth list of levels where escort quests will happen — the practical upshot of which, obviously, being no escort quests. For more information (including the objections I anticipate getting), see the Frequently Asked Questions below.

And no, obviously this one won't be going into ZOmnibus.

[Technical notes:]

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why not just turn down the quest when the escort appears?

*blink* …excuse me, have you read the text for that option? "Go away; I do not care for the weak." At that point the game might as well go all out and add a puppy for the player to kick. Not to mention that taking that option automatically marks the quest as failed, with the delightful bonus description that "You abandoned the <escort> to death." Two puppies and that kitten that follows you into the fortress.

It's simple math, really: If I reject the quest, the escort dies and it's my fault. If I take the quest, there's still too high a risk that the escort will die due to my failure as a protector. If I eliminate the quest altogether, the escort doesn't die. The only winning move, as the saying goes, really is not to play.

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?

You can still get talents or talent trees from the escorts that don't die.

(shrug) Meh, not worth the risk. Besides, since those rewards aren't reliably obtainable anyway, I already have to play on the assumption that I'm not going to get any of them, so it's not really a loss.

Is this addon compatible with Escort Rescheduling?

Depends how you mean "compatible". This addon and the Escort Rescheduling addon both modify the same data structure, and so will potentially step on each other if both are enabled. If I've done it right, this addon's modifications will take precedence, but I don't encourage counting on that. (For that matter, why are you enabling both addons at once anyway?)

But does this mean that there are still people out there that need rescuing but you won't have a chance to help?
Does clearing the spawning locations actually help those poor lost people?
I don't think this addon is morally right.

HousePet wrote:But does this mean that there are still people out there that need rescuing but you won't have a chance to help?

(shrug) Meh, if there can exist people that need escorting other than the ones we see, that could just as easily be true without this addon. My personal theory is that it's the quest itself that puts these poor people in danger…

Just had a bit of a brainstorm while experimenting with a point plan build: if we're blocking escorts, then it's pointless to show any of the talent sources that come from escort quests, since we can't get any of them. Easy enough to arrange via our extensive hooks into the planner dialog; that's going out as v1a.