Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Party Size Discussion

I've played PnP with 4-8 characters 1, 2nd and 3.5 but not 5th ed. But looking through Avernus it strikes me as module that favors 1) negotiating and 2) sneaking. Any party that tried direct assault would die pretty quickly.

The campaigns I ran for 4 people had more puzzles and riddles than anything else. The thief got more "stage time" than anyone else "checking for traps and secret doors . . ."

1) yes 2) definetly

Im DMing Avernus right now and my party has a "we'll-sneak-but-if-it-doesn't-work-we'll-kill-them-all" approach and so far so good 🙄

Again I say 5 as standard/unmodded. It works with WoW and PoE series.

As confirmed in the in the Q&A of Community Update 6:



Early Access will allow you to control a main character with 3 companions.
This will not change during the entirety of Early Access. (Approximately a year)

Mod support will be worked on after the game is officially released sometime in late 2021.
At that point someone will likely create a Mod to support the control of more characters than the game is balanced for.

If the control of 6 characters is a deal breaker for you then I would avoid playing Early Access.

From--

Tyranny of Dragons: "The ideal party size is four characters."
Rise of Tiamat: "Four characters is the ideal party size."
Tomb of Annihilation: "This adventure is designed to begin with a party of four to six 1st-level characters"
Storm Kings Thunder: "Storm King's Thunder is a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure for four to six player characters."
Curse of Stradh: "Curse of Strahd is a story of gothic horror, presented here as a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS roleplaying game adventure for a party of four to six adventurers of levels 1-10."
Baldur's Gate- Descent into Avernus: "DESIGNED FOR AN ADVENTURING PARTY OF four to six 1st-level characters"
Etc...

You occasionally see 3-7 recommended for tournament type adventure play. But, no matter how you slice it, the adventures that make up the pillars of 5e were designed for play in the 4-6 level range.

BG3 almost certainly went with four because that's what the Divinity Engine was already optimized for, but no one can legitimately propose that a 4 party 5e game won't feel like D&D. 5e party balance just isn't the same as 2e party balance.

@Maximuus

About your question on how they will handle difficulty in BG3, they´re answered that in the Community update.





If they are handling difficulty level adding more difficult encounters, not just adding hp and damage to pre-existing creatures the modders of the hypotetical 6-man-party mod would have their work easier if you have access to the tools that allow the game engine to change encounters depending on your difficulty (and if you can change it midgame) or much more difficult if you have to balance the encounters for every character more you add in every difficulty mode...

As always, a lot of "ifs" We still have to wait until we have the modding tools. That would be after the EA, in an unknown date, according to the Community update.

We'll have to wait and see how it works... lots of "if" actually as you said. One thing is not an "if" : I'll ask for an official party of 6 until the end but of course in a positive way and trying to find solutions (solutions from a random player that is not a video game developper).

I don't really like mods. I like playing the official version of a game and I'll try to convince Larian that this could be a great improvement for their Baldur's Gate game(s).

Wait and see on that point. Let's play the game first.

^ Agree completely

I agree in that yes there are a lot of ifs, however he did say in his own words in an interview that a mod would be "easy". So, if they added it it might not be too terribly hard to do. How to balance that is up to them but doesn't have to be rocket science imo. More enemies generally works well. (Which would simultaneously make level progression about the same.)

I'll keep politely asking for 6 as well. They know a lot of people want it. Those people might not be the EA players but they WILL be paying customers all the same. I want to play the finished game so I wont be playing EA. Like Maximuuus I don't really like mods either. I like options being in the core game itself, mods tend to be glitchy or have other downsides.

Also while it's cool they added those streaming features, for the vast majority of people who aren't streamers.... that's just a feature no one is ever going to use that who knows how much effort and time went in to.

Neither adding the streaming feature nor increasing the party limit are things that will take a lot of time. What would potentially take a lot of time is rebalancing every encounter for a larger party.

I personally would love a 6 character party, so it would be great for me if they did that.

XCom has a 6 soldier squad, sometimes even 7 if you have a guest character, and that always felt like a good number to me.

It´s far easier to add more enemies to the pod in random generated maps like in Xcom tho.

Sven stated in the interview that the game engine and UI will support 6 characters and we would have mooding tools whenever, but the thing is just adding more characters to the party is not enough. You have to be sure that the dialogues, flags and banters will fire accordingly, the characters do not get stuck in cinematics and possibly tweak the enemy encounters so you do not overwhelm any enemy you find.

Right now we know nothings so.. lots of ifs he he.

At least if they´re going to add more enemies and more difficult encounters in the harder modes maybe you can mod the game to have 6 characters and play in veteran or nightmare and the game would be challenging. Still the question if the extra characters would add something to dialogues and cinematics too.

I don't see why this would be the case at all. Why would such things as dialogue and cinematics be dependent on party size? They are things that should be dependent only on each individual character.

Good question. We don't really have enough information available to us to answer it. It depends on 1) how they are triggering the banters and conversations and 2) how they have structured those conversations. In BG2 dialogues were based on a timer -- which gave the conversations a spontaneous feel "hey here we are in the street, it just occurred to me" but frustrated people who could never get to the end of the romances because they finished the game so quickly.

SoD used ground triggers -- which made sure that all dialogues fired and eliminated the need to keep the game running just to fire a dialogue but that system had the unintended consequence of lowering the replay value of the game. "Now when I step here, I have this conversation -- same story each time" ToB used a combination of event triggers and timers which was a better than just ground triggers but also made some dialogues predictable. In the infinity engine the number of characters didn't matter -- just which NPCs were present.

I dunno what system BG3 is going to use but if the trigger is linked to party formation or designed to start a specific four way conversation and five people are present that could, maybe, possibly cause problems. It all comes down to if / then statements and how they are designed. So this formation could cause problems. If astarian (player) [variable] showheart [variable] Wyll [variable] Lae'zel then [script var1 = var] + [script var2 = var] + [script var3 = var] + [script var = var ] = [script party disagreement] . NPC 5 wouldn't be included in the formula.

Well, personally, I think with this type of game 4 characters is great. I think 5 would be great as well, but I understand why the developers went with 4--the more characters, the more permutations, etc.

Whether it be a CRPG or a table-top setting, though, I think more than 5 is too many. I say this because beyond 5, the party seems less connected (just feels less "cozy" and unified...personal impression) and combat tends to become a little tedious (CRPG) or boring (table-top, where you have to wait so long for your turn to act in combat).

Original Title: "My open letter to Larian on party size"


Good evening to all the staff currently working hard at Larian Studios.

I would like to take a few minutes of your time to talk about the current party size in game, my problems with it and also a possible solution for the future.

Note: this section got away from me and was far longer than expected. It is no essential and only helps to know my gaming history and mindset but can otherwise be skipped if you so choose.
But first I would like to give you a quick insight into my history and mindset in the hopes that it will give you a clearer idea of how I am approaching BG3.
I am 34 (born July of 1986) and I had lots of fun playing the original Baldur's Gate and to lesser extent Icewind Dale games as a child, I later played and absolutely adored Dragon Age: Origins, although coming to it with the mindset of it been the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate I wish to this day that it had a six man party, to me that is it's only real flaw.
When I first heard that BG3 was going to be a reality I was fairly excited, and then upon hearing that it was going to be made by Larian I was apprehensive and then like many others when the first gameplay was shown I didn't like what I saw thinking it looked to much like Divinity: Original Sin, and was pretty much ready to write the game off as not for me as it was too different from what I was familiar with from the original BG games.
My experience with the D:OS games has been one of mostly confusion and I will be the first to admit that I have not given them a proper chance despite having pretty much every Divinity game in my Steam library. I put my bad experience down to not understanding the mechanics and systems of the games and never properly learning them. However since the announcement of BG3 I have gotten into the Fire Emblem games so now I'm more amenable to the idea of BG3 being a turn based game and the more I think about it lately the more I think it might actually be a good thing (in BG & BG2I remember leaving my mages in the back not contributing in most fights to conserve their spell slots, something that doesn't seem to be an issue in your game). And keeping up with the progression and development and have been slowly coming around to your vision of the game, I have bought the game and created a character but that is as far as I have gotten so far so I can come and write this. Character creation was much more straight forward and easier dew to me been familiar with the systems and mechanics of previous D&D titles and I'm looking forward to getting to grips with the game going forward.
I hope that this has helped some of you understand me a little better.


Now for the reason for this post: I would like to advocate for an option to have a six man party.
When forming a party of adventurers in games like this I like a well rounded and balanced party as I would imagine a great many players do as well. You need someone to tank and keep the enemies in place, you need a rouge or thief for picking locks and traps, and for obvious reasons a healer, leaving one slot available which I will most often fill with a spell caster and as such my party composition tends to look very much the same for every playthrough. Increasing the party limit to six not only brings it in line with the original games it also allows the player much more freedom, flexibility and creativity when creating a balanced party. It is my firm belief that a six man party is far superior over a four man party and gives much greater player agency.
And what may at first seem like a contradiction to you I am nod advocating for it to be the default way to play, I understand that you have a vision for the game and I will not argue that you are wrong in it because that is not something I believe in. A four man party or a six man party as a matter of preference and therefore is always the right way to go from each individuals perspective. I know there must be a great many people like me who much prefer a six man party and I would like to offer a suggestion on how you could possibly make both groups of players happy.
For early access and your balancing process keep working on it from the four man party perspective, make the game you have envisioned and focus all of your time up to full release on making it as good as you can, use the early access period to gather the data you need to make the game the way you envision it, make four man the default way to play.
and then when you are ready for full release have an option that can be turned on at the start of a campaign that allows for a six man party, don't spend your time around balancing this option, and when selecting this you can even have a warning that say's the game is not balanced around this size of party so it will probably be easier than intended and as such not compatible with achievements, all I'd like to request for this mode is that dialog sequences and cutscenes account for the increased party size. While mods will probably bring this option to us in the future it would be nice to have an officially supported option to do this implemented by the development staff so we would not have to worry about it not working properly or not playing well with cutscenes and dialog sequences, what I'm advocating for is you to give players the option of party size even if it's not properly balanced to allow for more choice and creativity when choosing who to bring along and so we can have a closer experience to the original games.

I would like to thank anyone who has taken the time to read my long somewhat rambling post and I would encourage anyone who has thoughts on my ideas and suggestions to add to a discussion of why you agree or disagree with me, I will be posting this on the Larian forums, Steam forums and GOG forums to try and get as much impute from as many players as possible to give Larian as much information on this subject as we can, then maybe if enough people want something like this or something similar Larian might consider its implantation when they have finished balancing the game for the full release. Your time is valuable and I thank you all for sharing a little of it with me today.

+1

+1

The party size of 4 restricts the player so heavily that you more or less will end up with a cookie cutter lineup instead of being able to be more creative with it. Just because you want to cover your basics.

By far the most common suggestion I'm seeing on these boards. Honestly I feel like the reasoning for this should be obvious and has been stated in every post that has suggested it. It has also been said repeatedly since the official announcement. Its not some out of left field suggestion it is an argument that has been repeated many many times and acknowledged by Swen in interview and even though I believe he said larger party size was something they were considering (I might be wrong there, but i believe it was something he mentioned after people kept saying to him about a larger party) it seems they didn't consider hard enough and I would hazard a guess that the reason the party size stayed at four was because a larger party meant more companions needed to be made and that drives up cost and dev time exponentially if you want the companions to be highly interactive with what's going on. Too many cRPG devs see larger parties as a cool extra that they can do if they have time to make it work after getting the core experience sorted. In fact it is a necessary part of the core experience when using a well defined class based system as the player needs to cover the basic roles and have a slot or two for the RP focused character, or interesting character that doesn't fit into a specific role particularly well (eg. with 4 slots it will never.... never be worth it to take a great old one warlock as their in PnP is essentially RP sloot, fun but not so good in a fight). The reason the 4 man party works in tabletop is because you have a DM to tailor the experience to suit your slightly off-kilter party composition, not to mention that most PnP is considerably lighter on combat than most cRPGs

+1

This. The only way for that not to happen right now, would be to constantly restricted the player from using certain characters for story reasons, which would be horrible...

Or the DM just adds a NPC or two to help you out. Great way for the DM to interject themselves in the party banter