Inclinations in Dragon's Dogma are behavioral tendencies that govern your main Pawn AI - how they act in battle, what items they use, what actions they take when the player uses Pawn commands etc. Please see Pawn Troubleshooting for help with your Pawn's behavior.
Dragon's Dogma Inclinations
Dragon's Dogma Inclination Basic Information
- 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.
Dragon's Dogma Inclinations List
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 and keep the party alive.
Acquisitor
- The pawn will search the area for items regardless of the situation.
Challenger
- The pawn will attack enemies using ranged or magick first.
Scather
- The pawn will attack stronger enemies first.
Mitigator
- The pawn will attack weaker enemies first.
Utilitarian
- The pawn will adapt its strategies to give allies advantages.
Dragon's Dogma Inclinations Guide
Initial Inclinations
The Main Pawn's Inclinations are initially set by answering a series of questions available at the time of creation. The result of choosing a particular answer is displayed on a graph.
All Inclinations are present in the form of a table in the pawn's stats throughout the lifetime of the save game file; just because one cannot see Inclinations beyond the second or perhaps third position does not mean they do not exist. Inclinations are fluid. They shift either minutely or quickly in response to all actions performed by the player and by certain events occurring during battle.
Rented pawns' Inclinations remain fixed during the entire period of the rent, however their actions can influence the Main Pawn's behaviors. This is most common when renting Guardians, since Guardian behavior will affect the Main Pawn by increasing the need for the Main Pawn's battle participation due to their unresponsiveness to ranged and magick attacks.
Modifying Inclinations
The Neutralizing Elixir will reset all Inclinations 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
Arisen Actions
Additionally, Arisen behavior will constantly modify or reinforce 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 behaviours.
Knowledge Chairs
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 Inclinations 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 OR
- 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).
Notes
- 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 Elixir raises the tendency of a primary Inclination by 150 or 100 points per use.
- Use of an Inclination Elixir for a non-primary and non-secondary Inclination 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.
- Anonymous
If the devs were aware enough that we would want to change the inclinations (because that multiple choice question is massively stupid to start with) and allowed it with Rift Crystals from the start = We SHOULD have just been allowed to PICK the exact inclinations we want [A tertiary one that we can't even see is also not smartly programmed] WITH full explanations of exactly what the hell they do beforehand, and NEVER have it change for any reason.
Learning beast and quest knowledge is fine and fair enough. That should be all that was counted to their ability to learn. AI is hard enough to program correctly (and for the love of god - never mind the pawn chatter option; just let me in the knowledge chair ONE TIME!!! tell the bastard to shut the **** up. Not have them say I'll work on it, and two seconds after you leave the pawn guild they go right back to yapping like it didn't even enter their thick little head.
* Fully agree with the commentor that said this was a stupidly overly complicated system. I would further supply so was the Beloved system...
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