"My fellow gamers, forget goblin genocide! The problem is lazy, immoral party members that suck up all of our hero''s hard earned resources! If you elect me, I promise to end this scourge on our great gaming nation..." Ahem. In most party based RPGs you pay not only to build up your main character-- if you have one-- but your party as well. But what if, as Luxury was suggesting in a recent post you were only a main character hiring other characters. Let''s assume the AI isn''t an issue. How would you go about advancement? In the name of NPC autonomy, what do you think of this: You pay them, but how they spend their money is up to them. This becomes a personality issue, as a dedicated Paladin will take his money and go train, whereas a drunkard bard may waste most of it drinking and carousing. You could still train them out of your own pocket, but dedicated NPCs would go the extra mile to advance (and hence become more treasured to the player) I can imagine an NPC saying to you, "Hey, learned a new trick... watch this!" as he shows off new skills he''s acquired. Also, what if you extended this to inventory? You''d divide up the booty, and NPCs would keep a share based on their personality. Paladins, having little need for wealth, would put more into the pool, whereas greedy theives might even try to withhold from everyone. The goal here, btw, is to make your party seem more alive. I hate it when you''re wandering around with zombies that are supposed to be people with names, histories, and some sort of personality. (Heck, if I wanted zombies I''d go play the Necromancer in Diablo 2!!!) -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Sound alot better than spending all of your money on that moron who dies in the next battle and it all goes to waste!

Sounds very interesting to me, this would be a good way to show a bit of personality to the NPC AI. At last, you would get a wizard that would not buff up his sword and weapons skill, but rather count on you to protect him, unless he is a very independent person who like to play with daggers ?
Anyway, this would be a good opportunity to show off and use the nicely crafted background story of those characters...
A paladin would spend his time in prayers and exercises, the hobbit/halfling of the group would cook, etc

yeah, I like that a lot !

youpla :-P