Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is there a chance party size will be increased or are we stuck with 4 ?

So, I'm just going off of what was provided in another post. If you have questions, ask them. I really don't care about party size, because I already know, if I want to have a party of 1, I can do that. I don't care if you're only looking for nostalgia, or if you feel like a party of 4, in Normal, means that the game's too hard, or anything in between. I've stated this before, in one of the hundred other threads about this, that more than 4 is going to trivialize the content. Which brings me full circle to the balancing point in this post.


Very interesting, pg 83 of the DMG says 3-5? That means that 4 should be the perfect balance, right? So, a module written for 4 is well within the rules for 5e. Note: I didn't remove the other modules limits of 4-5 or 4-6, because I believe in telling the truth, instead of trying to claim "it's on the internet, so it must be true" or "but I'm a squeaky wheel". So, it seems to me that, if one is looking for this particular module to have more than 4, they're going to have to "homebrew" it in. Thanks for sending me looking, this is great information to have.

Man, this would be an incredibly salacious GOTHCA...
If the whole "the default party for the tabletop" thing wasn't already been argued to death and back, PRECISELY to stress how and why a tabletop experience involving multiple players and a big CRPG spawning even hundreds of hours are NOT the same type of experience.

We even discussed WHY the default party suggested for a tabletop is of four, among other things. And it has little to do with "balance", for the record.
It comes from the difficulty to gather a larger number of people physically around a table to play a game for hours at regular intervals, from the tendency of tabletop players to go off topic, take pauses, slow each other continuously, etc, etc.
Try to take a guess on why the manual can't tell people "you won't have the optimal experience unless you have at least X amount of people", for its own good.

Conversely a computer game lives on the size and variety of its cast, on the possibilities it offers to the player to mix and match things at will and try different combinations and so on.

Basically, you aren't revealing anything. You are just late to catch up with things we already said two years ago.

P.S. Fun fact: "Critical Role" may very well be the most popular "live tabletop campaign of D&D" ever played and it involved six players and a GM. Guess someone needs to tell them they got it wrong.

Where's the one where it says 6?

The general average for a table is 4-6, but there is no correct amount. It can be played with just two players and a DM, or 9. The median rests around 5. (Edit: In practicality. I tend to prefer 4 max 5 personally around a table since it's enough for players to socially have enough people to play off of in roleplay, but few enough to give plenty of playtime for everyone to shine. If anything, I think larger party sizes are better in video games than in tabletop comparatively, for those reasons.)

To reiterate: There is NO number that is 'the correct amount' for how many players are in a D&D campaign. Anyone claiming otherwise, is wise to ignore as they're being disingenuous at best, ignorant at worst.

However, there is a matter of preference. In a video game environment specifically, some people want a party of six, for any particular reason individual to them that is perfectly fair and valid. And not wrong. Just like a party of four is equally valid, both for tabletop and a video game. On the matter of feedback, that's basically it; A wish for the option to have six party members, even if it means resulting in the game being easier / not balanced for it. They simply prefer having a bigger party. It's a generous compromise, recognizing the workload a development process requires to do both (not to mention extra QA hours). That's being reasonable.

Instead the discussion should be about having the option for both in some shape or form, because as soon as people start to argue objectivity, they're almost always objectively wrong. Because there is no fixed party size in D&D.

A simple google search of 'how many players in D&D' will give you a wide variety of discussions and results on the matter, and pretty much all sources agree that there is no particular fixed party size number.

I actually went and looked it up, and found the snippet I posted above. I think 4 is a good amount to have, since it's the average of what's recommended in the DMG. I'd say that's a pretty solid frame of reference.

I never claimed that it should be 6 and 6 only. There is no correct amount, I agree. In that sense 5e rules has nothing against 6 players.

My point is that 6 players are not homebrew, as robert claimed.

Correct.

If we are putting it in these terms, the actual majority out there doesn't care about this game at all.

Why? Party size isn't that important to everyone. People are interested in this game for very different reasons.

Who are these people you keep talking about? And why should anyone care specifically about them?

I agree that BG3 combat can currently feel slow, but this problem shouldn't be exacerbated with an (optional) increased party size:
1.) If Larian doesn't change encounters (many people are arguing for this - I think Larian should change exp gain instead) then a 6-person party will have a higher ratio of players-to-enemies than a 4-person party. I.e., a single player will spend a higher % of their time actually playing the game vs waiting. And in absolute terms, a 6-player combat will then proceed faster.
2.) If Larian does change encounters for a 6-person party, ideally they'd do it smart (which, hey, might be a big assumption) and modifiy enemies so we face a similar amount of stronger enemies, rather than more of the same weak enemies. Thus time spent between turns and in combat would remain the same.

Individual play time will be negatively affected in multiplayer, but only if you decide to play with 5 friends. Which is an additional option not currently allowed, and I want to stress, is only an option. You can still choose always choose to play with 4 players and 4 PCs for the default experience.

It would be a seriously tricky balance rework to do because the action economy of 6 players is an enormous leg-up. And balance is a mess as it is already.

Balancing is hardly a concern, and even if Larian feels the need to balance the game around 6 players then they only need to add more enemies to a fight. With the new swarm AI longer waiting times will no longer be a problem.

If anything, without any rebalance involved, playing with a party of six characters currently the fights just go by faster.
You are quicker to make kills, less dependent on the occasional RNG for crowd control, etc.

And most of what makes SOME fights feel slower than they should be is tied to minor annoyances that will hopefully be addressed over time, like the AI "hanging up" while thinking about the next move or minor details that pile up, like the berserk ability being unnecessarily long, dash demanding a confirmation click with included animation of the character powering up (?) on top, etc.

You're not wrong, especially because no part of the current balance should be supposed to be final, anyway.
But that won't stop people from mentioning it every single time under the pretense it's a major concern, as if their life depended by keeping things as they are now.

Except that the amount of time will still be extended, because the turns still take the same amount of time to process. Even assuming a scenario where two party members get attacks back to back, and focus fire and kill a mob, it still takes both turns to do so, it won't be accelerated any more than if the first one kills the same mob, and the second targets someone else. This will vary wildly depending on the numbers involved of course, but in larger combat scenarios, it will definitely extend it out. IF someone is feeling like combat is already too slow, this will compound the issue further.


This is an interesting take, especially complaining about confirmation clicks for something during your turn, while simultaneously campaigning for more confirmation clicks for reactions? Especially since I can see myself "typoing" a skill use, pressing the wrong hotkey, and being grateful that I can say "no, that was a mistake". While I don't disagree with the latter, I just find it interesting.

Yeah, it's almost like I wanted confirmation clicks where they are actually needed rather than where they are not.
not to mention that I pointed that the click was only a part of the problem.

So ... they, whoever they are, dont care if we get party of 6, corect?

Let's clarify the "time" we're talking about.

For Total Combat Time, I agree that the first (and maybe second) turn might take longer because you'll have more participants. But subsequent turns in a combat should be faster, as more party members = more focus fire = more dead enemies, more quickly = less enemy turns* on future rounds of combat. (Asterisks because of Swarm AI, so killing one member of a swarm doesn't save time). Overall, yes it depends. But it's probably a similar amount of time.

For Enemy Waiting Time (time spent waiting for enemies to take turns), a larger party against an unchanged # of enemies strictly lower this time, for similar reasons as the above - you kill enemies faster. And this means that you (and/or friends) will spend a larger percentage of the time actually playing, which will make combats feel less sluggish regardless of Total Combat Time.

For Multiplayer Waiting Time (time spent waiting for fellow players to take turns), yes this would increase. But, as always, you can still just play with 4 or 2 or 1 players instead of 6. Or yell at your friends to hurry up.

Also worth noting that it's not a medical prescription for every single character to have an unique player behind.
For instance in the chance I should ever match my schedule with them I'd love if I could play this with one of my friends who bought the game, with each of us controlling 3 characters. Or maybe with 3 players having two characters each. Or any combination of characters and players. really.

It's amazing, it's almost as if I'd replied to this before you posted it! Oh, wait, I did. You just decided that it would better suit your argument to remove the context, eh?