I have some questions about RPCs and how the game behaves under certain circumstances:

For these first questions, let's assume that Vi Domina is in the party, and that she's the only living party member (everyone else is dead):
* What happens if I attempt to walk into Rapax territories? (Normally, you have to let Vi go or not continue, but what if she's the only survivor)?
* What happens if I pick up Marten's Idol for the first time? (In particular, who does Crock capture?)
* What happens if I approach the Cosmic Circle and trigger the final boss fight? (My understanding is that Vi Domina leavs the party and becomes an NPC, but what if she's the only one alive?)

Another question involving a different RPC:
* Normally, if you have a Mook in your party the first time you encounter the hologram in front of the Mook building in Arnika, that Mook will go missing for a day, then rejoin the party. What if you have no created Mooks, but somehow have Urq in the party? (I believe this can happen if you use a save warp glitch to enter the Mook building without the alliance letter, recruit him, then portal out.)

So, anyone know what happens in these situations?

Not very satisfying, but I have no idea. I don't really use RPCs. Are you actually planning on doing this, or is this just curiousity? My biggest problem with RPCs is that they keep having to leave your party, thus making them lower level than the rest of the party, and they never seem to be able to catch up. You can't bring any RPCs with you into the Rapax Away Camp, because Drazic and Rodan need to be rescued.

It's mostly just curiosity, but perhaps also to see if there's any possible exploits this way.

(Can kidnapping after picking up Marten's Idol be dodged this way? I know there's a way to avoid it by saving after picking up the idol but before the kidnapping appears (saw it in an older speedrun), but it would still be interesting to know if this solution would work. No, I don't want to kill Crock.)

You could try saving right after picking up Marten's Idol, and before the kidnapping, but I would assume that you have to be quick, because I remember that it happens quickly. I never understood that anyways, why would grabbing a statue knock out the whole party? There must be a sleeping gas trap set.

Answer = She leaves and its a party wipe

fun fact; if she is insane then she keeps walking ;)

These are all hypothetical, and probably not a reason to base a party off of. I always base my party off of survivability, and not what random RPCs want to do. It's your game, however.

Sometimes, I ask these questions, not for getting ideas on how to play the game seriously, but rather because I am curious about how the game behaves. For example, I sometimes like doing things like going out of bounds just to see what it's like, and I even took a picture there some years ago.

About the only times where I've used this sort of knowledge to form a party are in Bard's Tale 3 (any) and 2 (Apple 2GS), where thanks to a glitch I'm able to walk around with a 0-character party.

(The first screenshot is in the Upper Monastery, from the other side of the door; the second two are from the Bard's Tale games, taken during battle with an enemy attacking one of my (0) characters.)

If an RPC is the only living party member and leaves the party, the game ends with a death screen.

Urq should not trigger the Mook leaving a party event, but that's just an educated quess. I may test it in the future.

As for grabbing the idol with only RPCs alive, a dead character will be kidnapped. Crock doesn't care :)

That's rather interesting.

When you rescue the dead character, is that character still dead?

This reminds me of another oddity I've heard about: If everybody in the party is blind, the enemies will turn invisible, but as soon as one of them dies (and is no longer blind, because death cures everything), enemies become visible again.