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Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen – Pawn Inclination & How it works

In depth guide on how to change or modify your pawn’s behavior.

Basic Info

  • Pawn Inclination helps determine a Pawn’s behavior in all situations.
  • Main Pawn inclinations are initially chosen by answering different questions during their creation.
  • Inclinations can be modified at any time afterwards by using the Knowledge Chair found at Inns and Rest Camps.
  • Inclination can also be altered by using Elixirs, which are purchased from Johnathan’s Rift Shop in the Encampment.
  • Pawn behavior in Combat are influenced by their first three inclinations.
  • You can use the Neutralizing Elixir to reset all of a pawn’s inclinations to their original state, which is a middle value for each.
  • Pawns will use their Travel and Bestiary knowledge in combination with their inclinations to determine their actions.

Pawn Inclinations (Behavior)

Nexus.
The pawn will aid other pawns in the party.

Pioneer.
The pawn will scout ahead and be on the look out for incoming danger.

Guardian.
The Pawn will stay near and guard the arisen.

Medicant.
The pawn will heal & keep the party alive.

Acquisitor.
The pawn will search the area for items regarless of the current situation.

Challenger.
The pawn will attack enemies using ranged or magick attacks first.

Scather.
The pawn will attack the stronger enemies first.

Mitigator.
The pawn will attack weaker enemies first.

Utilitarian.
The pawn will adapt it’s strategies to give allies advantages.

Using Elixirs

The Neutralizing Elixir reset all inclination to their initial value – internally this is stored as a middling value of 500 in a possible range from 0 to 1000. It can be used and then followed by further elixirs, or followed by the player modeling tactics; e.g., battle training.

Inclination Elixirs can be used to set primary, secondary, and unseen tertiary inclinations immediately and directly.

  • Giving an elixir to a pawn with no primary inclination will set this inclination as primary.
  • Giving an elixir of the primary inclination will reinforce the primary inclination.
  • Giving any elixir that is not secondary will set the corresponding inclination to secondary and push the other inclinations down the list.
  • Giving the same elixir twice one after the other will set this inclination as primary and push all other inclinations down the list.

Inclination changes from Arisen actions

Additionally, Arisen behavior will constantly modify or re-inforce the Main Pawn’s inclinations by slowly increasing or decreasing the inclinations that correspond to the player’s actions, e.g., shooting a target at range increases Challenger, while moving in for close-combat with daggers will affect Scather.

Actions that affect your pawn’s inclinations are:

  • Fighting style – ranged or close combat, or healer or spellcaster.
  • Climbing and other combat behaviors, including grappling enemies.
  • Non-combat actions, such as regular use of gathering or mining.
  • The battle orders the Arisen issues; i.e, “come”, “go”, “help”.
  • The fighting style of hired pawns.
  • Every time the game makes a movement for your pawn in response to an external stimuli, an inclination in your pawn’s table shifts in terms of importance and/or intensity by a very small amount.

Over time, your pawn will grow to mirror your own behaviors.

Knowledge Chair

The Knowledge Chair allows the Arisen to switch or retain the Main Pawn’s secondary and tertiary inclinations – the pawn will pose a question indicating the behaviors corresponding to its secondary and tertiary inclinations.

Switching the secondary and tertiary inclinations will also reinforce the primary inclinations and modify values of other minor inclinations.

If the pawn has no inclinations listed or only one listed, the unseen inclinations all have the same value. The pawn may question the Arisen in order to sort those values out.

Determining Inclinations

Primary and Secondary Pawn Inclination can be checked in the “Status” section of the pause menu and is listed under the “Profile” heading. The Tertiary Inclination can be determined by using a Knowledge Chair – it will be given as a choice together with the current secondary inclination.

If a pawn has only one or no inclinations indicated, that means multiple inclination values are identical. For example, Rook, who has the single inclination of Challenger, that represents his strongest inclination and all others in Rook’s inclination table have values that are exactly the same. If Rook were a Main Pawn and questioned in the Knowledge Chair by his Arisen, he would pose a series of questions that would sort out two inclinations to occupy the secondary and tertiary positions.

Detailed Inclinations

It is known that a pawn’s inclinations are ordered in value in a list, and that the latest stimuli to the Inclination table is the most important in terms of primacy. Therefore, by multiple use of of Elixirs, or, more slowly, through general gameplay, a list with multiple inclinations in order can be generated.

For Example: The Arisen wishes to set their main pawn as a Utilitarian/Challenger/Mitigator and push all other inclinations lower in value than tertiary. The elixirs to be taken in order are:

Mitigator’s Elixir, Challenger’s Elixir, Utilitarian’s Elixir, Utilitarian’s Elixir
alternatively:

Neutralizing Elixir, Mitigator’s Elixir, Challenger’s Elixir, Utilitarian’s Elixir, Utilitarian’s Elixir
One applies Elixirs in reverse order; the last applied Elixir becomes the primary inclination.

Stability can then be maintained by sitting regularly in the Knowledge Chair and switching secondary and tertiary twice (to get back to the original state).

Extra notes/info

Each inclination description corresponds to an internally-stored behavioral trait. Their descriptions are:

  • Scather – Belligerent
  • Medicant – Prudent
  • Mitigator – Poor Aim
  • Challenger – Strategy
  • Utilitarian – Tactics
  • Guardian – Protection
  • Nexus – Same Support
  • Pioneer – Curiosity
  • Acquisitor – Gather

Each trait has a value in the range 0 to 1000 – the Neutralizing Elixir resets all values to 500.

An inclination potion raises the tendency of a primary trait by 150 or 100 points per use.
Use of an inclination potion for a non-primary and non-secondary trait raises that inclination to the value of the secondary inclination, and reduces the value of the old secondary to that of the tertiary inclination – the tertiary inclination is also reduced in value somewhat. All lesser inclinations are unchanged in order or in tendency.

The Left d-pad command encourages Medicant inclination when out of battle, Utilitarian when in battle. The left d-pad will ask for an elemental buff and call for healing, if necessary.
The Right d-pad command encourages Guardian both in and out of battle. It will ask a Mage for healing (any pawn with group curatives in its inventory will also respond if no Mage is in the party) and can call the Main Pawn back to the Arisen’s side.

The up or go command on the d-pad encourages Scather in battle, Pioneer out of battle.
Occasionally the pawn AI will experience a random glitch or bug where one inclination will be instantly promoted. This is theorized to be a residual effect carried over from old data; this can happen when rents are received, or in response to a d-pad order.

Written by Tritium-X

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