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Followers are [[NPCs]] who assist your hero in his or her battle against the [[demons]] overrunning [[Sanctuary]]. There are three followersFollowers in Diablo III, each of whom fills has a particular combat niche. Each follower is a fully-written character with full voice acting, an individual personalityunique story, a back storylook, and a key role in combat style. They are: the [[Eirena]] the plot of Diablo III. Followers assist in [[combatEnchantress]], use equipment[[Kormac]] the [[Templar]], level up and gain new skills, and are often [[questLyndon]] the [[Scoundrel]] givers.
Diablo III's Followers should not be mistaken for [[hirelings]]are updated versions of the hireable {{iw|mercenaries mercenaries}} that were available in Diablo II. Improvements to the system in Diablo III include, integration into the wandering NPCs who may assist a player during individual questsand story, spoken dialogue, but can not be given additional equipmentoptions and in-game looks, leveled up, etcand numerous unique skills/abilities for each of the three Followers.
==Followers in Diablo III==
* The [[Enchantress]] Eirena is a mage with numerous powerful ranged magical attacks and a variety of helpful buffs.
* The [[Scoundrel]] Lyndon is an ex-thief and archer who wields a crossbow. He has numerous bow attacks and can debuff monsersmonsters, slowing and poisoning them.
* The [[Templar]] Kormac is a heavily-armored [[tank]], ready to act as a meat shield for your ranged attacker. He can take on large groups of melee fighters and draw enemy attention in the toughest scrap.
===Lore-Abiding Citizens===
The followers, much like the [[Artisans]], are recruited through [[quests]] that the player must complete in order to gain their trust and companionship. Once this is done, the Followers can always be found in the Caravantown area, where a player may choose one of them to accompany him into battle. Followers have their own individual quests, which shed more light on their backstory as well as the overall game plot. A player will need to work through the entire game with each of the followers, individually, to experience the full game plot and all of the quests.
Fortunately, there are plenty of words from the men in blue themselves on the aspect of [[lore]] in the follower system, such as these quotes from [[Leonard Boyarsky]] in an interview with FZ.se[http://www.fz.se/artiklar/intervju/20110513/diablo-iii-followers]:
===Follower Death===
Followers do not die in Diablo III. They are simply incapacitated. Part of the reason for this is the general amount of frustration of having to go 15 seconds, after which they will get right back to town and pay a gold fee to resurrect a mercenary, and into the lack of logic that follows from thatfight. The other reason being that the followers are not mercs, they are [[NPC]]s with Players can accelerate their own story that is relevant resurrection/nap to the overall plot of the game. When a follower is incapacitated, they will revive after a short time on their own, or the player can revive them 5 seconds by standing above them and waking them up. The process of waking them up leaves the player vulnerable to attack, so it will be best to revive them when there aren't any enemies in the vicinity. While the follower is incapacitated, the player will not receive any bonuses that originate from near themwhile they are recuperating.
===Beyond Normal Mode===
<blue>Well, followers are essentially a flavor bonus to those playing through normal the first time by themselves. It provides some story elements, but more importantly it gets the idea in their head of playing with another person. You come across each of them pretty quickly in Act 1, and then they help you throughout the rest of the game if you'd like. They aren't required to beat the game on Normal, even if you're playing by yourself. Feel free to leave them behind if you like. But they are pretty awesome.
<blue>Followers will not stay alive easily past Normal, and if they’re not alive you aren’t going to be getting their bonuses. I’m sure people will try to game this, and ideally they will fail. If not we will ensure followers are not part of the end-game MF equation. They are not intended to be, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure they cannot be.</blue>
The developers changed that design theory later in development, and announced at BlizzCon 2011 that Followers were being rebalanced to remain viable throughout the higher difficulty levels. Bashiok added an update on that in early January, 2012.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/followers-viability]
<blue>A lot of us wanted to see followers become viable throughout the game too, and agree they really add something to the experience as a whole. One of our main driving forces in making this decision was the benefits of the co-op experience, and the disadvantage of playing alone in the Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno difficulties. Followers won’t follow you into co-op games because you’ll already have the superior firepower of your friends to help you, but playing alone you’re going to want to take advantage of their benefits. We’ve made the later difficulties of the game brutally difficult, and we realize that for those attempting to tackle these later difficulties alone, they’re really going to actually want some additional support in the form of the followers.
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Some players didn’t like their experience with mercenaries in Diablo II. We took feedback regarding mercenaries very seriously when designing Diablo III followers, and they differ from mercenaries in a few key ways that we think set them apart and resolve many issues. First of all, there is no resurrection or cost to your followers’ deaths, which makes their upkeep far less intrusive. When a follower takes enough damage to “die”, they simply take a knee, catch their breath, and after a few moments are back in the fight. That downtime could potentially have an effect on your own survival, but it’s unlikely to create a situation where you’re worrying about them or constantly working to keep them alive. We don’t want to turn what could be a fun benefit into a punishment by making players pay for their followers’ poor combat choices.
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Secondly, when you die, so does your follower. These aren’t characters that can hope to compete or continue on without you. While some players prefer to be the lone wolf taking on the forces of evil, our intent isn’t to dilute the hero aspects by adding more wolves to your wolf pack. We want followers to be an extension of your bad-assery, not a liability. The followers could almost be considered automated buffs/damage skills, but of course with quite a bit more flavor and customization options.
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We still have some tweaking to do with the followers, including their skills and end-game balancing. We continue to discover cool little ways to improve how each follower performs and the complements the different heroes. Our intent is to ensure players who take followers along find them to be helpful additions to their single-player experiences.</blue>
===Follower AI===
[[Jay Wilson]] spoke briefly about the AI challenges they faced, and what players can expect from follower AI, in an April 2011 interview with Now Gamer[http://www.nowgamer.com/features/1353/diablo-iii-interview-jay-wilson-talks-followers?o=2#listing]:
<blue>'''NowGamer''': You’ve talked in the past about improvements to enemy AI – what about NPCs?
<br>Take an enemy that burrows for example – they’re really most dangerous to a ranged class, so that’s what they focus on – they burrow and make a beeline for a ranged character. Whereas a lot of enemies will go ‘I want to attack somebody, but if I can’t reach one of the guys closest to me, or he has a lot of people attacking him already, I’m just going to choose somebody else’. So the attacks get spread out a little more. It makes having a Follower a lot more interesting because they’ll pick up some of the enemies’ focus but not all of it.</blue>
<blue>They are actor-voiced right now so when we are early in the development we just had sort of computer-generated voice so they sound like Stephen Hawkings *laughs*. It sounded like an Australian GPS. Now that they actually have voice acting it's supercool to walk around with them, they'll comment on the architecture, one of them will thank you for helping on its mission and your character will comment back to him as well. It really has made a huge difference in the world when you don't have the opportunity to play with another friend or something. Playing with a follower is the next best thing. </blue>
==The Follower Interface==
===Follower Inventory===
The player is able to equip the follower with two [[ring]]s, an [[amulet]], a main-hand [[weapon]], and an off-hand item when applicable, which includes [[a shield]]s and possibly [[orb]]s. The locked box in the inventory pane will be holds an item that is unique to that follower, which is unlockable at level 25. The unlockable item will be gained through completing the follower's questline, and only one special item is known at the moment: [[Kormac]] the [[Templar]] can unlock a holy book to equip that will aid him in battlegrant some sort of passive bonuses once retrieved and equipped.
The [[attribute]] section of the interface for mercenaries is gone with the introduction of followers. Instead, the relevant statistics displayed are the [[health]] of the follower (current health and maximum health), the range of damage they will inflict with a standard attack, and also resistances.
It is currently unknown what effect, if any, equipping a follower with an amulet containing player [[attributes]] will have, or if there are restrictions on gear or modifiers that the followers will be able to equip.
==Design Goal of Followers in Diablo III==
