Party member

A Party member, also referred to as party or playable cast, are the characters that can be controlled by the player. The EarthBound series has various different playable characters with each installment having a new set of playable characters. Most characters are young kids or teenagers, although in Mother 3 adults are playable as well.

Main characters
EarthBound Beginnings has four main characters that are playable in the game. At the beginning of the game, the player must assign names to each character, with a limit of seven letters for the name. If another character or enemy in the game uses that name, the player cannot use that name for the character (e.g. the name "Maria" can't be used). Below are the characters with their default names:

Equipment
Each character has a unique set of weapons to equip to raise their Offense. Ninten's primary weapons are baseball bat, Lloyd's primary weapons are guns, Ana uses frying pans, and Teddy uses knives and swords. Additionally, slingshots and the boomerang are universal weapons that any character can equip. Defense raising equips are also universal.

Age
Excluding Teddy, the ages of the cast are found in Encyclopedia MOTHER:


 * Ninten: 12


 * Lloyd: 11


 * Ana: 12

Additional character
In addition to this, there is also a temporary party member that is playable in game, who is:

Pippi is a 7 year old girl who temporarily joins Ninten at the beginning of the game. Unlike other temparory party members, she is interestingly the only temporary party member who can be controlled by the player. Another interesting fact is her stats are identical to Teddy's, this isn't noticed easily at first because Teddy joins at level 18, unlike Pippi who joins at level 1.

Main characters
As with EarthBound Beginnings there are four main characters. Like EarthBound Beginnings the player must name each character at the start of the game, however the character limit has been reduced to five. Selecting the "Don't care" key will assign a set of default names depending on the character. This time all four can be playable at once:

The four playable characters appearences in EarthBound have been noted to be very similar to the appearances of the characters in the predecessor (sans Poo and Teddy), and some fans consider them to be the same characters. Shigesato Itoi confirmed that he intentionally designed them to be similar to allow players to decide whether they're the same or different.

Equipment
The equipment for the cast is relatively similar to the characters in EarthBound Beginnings: Ness uses baseball bats, Paula uses frying pans, Jeff uses guns, and Poo uses swords.

Age
Unlike EarthBound Beginnings the ages were left vague by Shigesato Itoi.
 * The EarthBound Player's Guide and official UK website claims Ness is 13, however when asked about his age Shigesato Itoi said he never had an official age, and instead compared him to his daughter who was in 4th or 5th garde at the time, implying Ness might actually be younger than what the player's guide and UK website claims. Additionally most sources in Japan state Ness is 12 years old.


 * the UK website says Paula is 11 years old.


 * Jeff is the same age as Ness so he could be 13 years old or younger.


 * Poo is left vague, with the player's guide saying he is "a little older than Ness".

Main characters
There are four main characters and all are playable in the party starting Chapter 5 and onwards. Prior to this there are different playable characters depending on the chapter. At the beginning of the game the player names Lucas and his family (now with an eight characters limit) as opposed to all of the main characters, instead the other main characters will be named when they're met. As with EarthBound the don't care option assigns their default names. The four main characters are:

Lucas is first playable in the prologue, Kumatora is first playable in Chapter 2, and Duster and Boney are first playable in Chapter 1.

Temporary playable characters
Before Chapter 4 each chapter has a different playable character assigned to the role of the chapter:

Flint is the main character in Chapter 1, where he is searching for his wife Hinawa who was killed by a Mecha Drago. Later his older son Claus goes to the mountains to get revenge on the Drago who killed Hinawa, and Flint goes off to search for him, but Claus was nowhere to be found.

Salsa is a monkey who is playable in Chapter 3, where he was captured by the Pigmask Army and is forced to work for Fassad in order to save his girlfriend.

Claus is Lucas's older twin brother who is briefly playable in the prologue. He helps Lucas defeat a Mole Cricket who challenges Lucas for a battle.

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