Does changing character order actually do anything?

[Porcelain]

I'm talking about the formation option that's in the default menu. It seems like it just changes the order of the characters in the menu/field/battles. Does it actually affect anything else, like how often characters are targeted? Just asking out of curiosity.

 

[Galv]

I don't believe it does anything else, nope. Just player preferred order and whichever character is at the top is the party leader (if followers are turned off, the only character who shows on the map).

 

[Victor Sant]

Actually there is a small difference. The targetSmooth function gets the first alive actor if the choosen actor is not a legal target.


So if a random target action choose an invalid target, the first alive target will be choosen instead.


Other than that. there is not much difference.

 

[Andar]

Additionally, the formation order determines which actors are used for battle.


By default the first four actors participate in battle, everyone from fifth party position is the reserve. (you'll need a plugin to change the number of battlemembers)

 

[DLHB Studios]

I removed the formation option from my game for one reason, and if you use "cutscenes" you might want to take note. During a few areas, I have scenes where I turn player followers off and have them appear separately as events in different places in the scene. For example player 1 still shows, and 2, 3, and 4 are separate events. If you change the formation so another character leads, it will make that character appear twice.

 

[Pine Towers]

Also, some custom Message plugins allows to you call the name/face/nickname of the actor in position x of the party (not the actor with index x), to allows a party with more than 4 members have nice dialogues even if you changed everyone around.