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

Mod edit following thread merge. Original thread title; "Six Character Party"


So, I'm an old school gamer and I usually just let things pan out. HOWEVER... This is a special game to me, being a Baldurs Gate, which is one of my favorite games of all time, as are all of the good old D&D computer games. And in nearly every one of those games from the old DOS TSR games to the original Baldurs Gate I & II, Icewind Dale I & II, Neverwinter etc etc. Almost every one of those games had... A SIX CHARACTER PARTY.

Now, maybe I've missed something, and they (Larian) already plan on doing a six character party, but it really sounds like they are shooting for only 4. And I understand doing that with multiplayer is different, and if 4 players is the max actual players for multi but still have a 6 char party, that's fine (1 or 2 players could control multiple chars in multiplayer). But if we are limited to a 4 person party throughout the game (not counting little minions etc, like actual "player/party" characters, I'm doing to be very disappointed honestly.

I know you guys will make a great game and I absolutely loved DOS II, wonderful and amazing game, and I kind of assumed that BG III may well end up looking very, very similar. And it does, and that's fine that your mechanics and such look similar and the world is different (and more polished). But, without a 6 character party, it's almost like I'm going to be playing the next Divinity, in the D&D world, not so much, BG III if you understand what I mean. All the other games I fondly remember were the 2D isometric view that is totally iconic at this point, and all of those games had a 6 character party. Maybe it would have been cool to do some interesting adaptation of the perspective of the old games like BG I & II and the pause but I'm sure that playing turn based will be just fine. So, I'm ok with the very different flow of the game from the original's real time pause to something more of an improved DOS II world & battle system, but I'm not ok with a 4 person party... Just not at all.

Please, please, please, make the game with a six person party. I should have piped up immediately when the game was announced probably but, I figured I'd watch and see where it goes, and hoped, that 6 person party was just kind of a given. I was concerned since DOS II was only 4, but I hoped you'd all say, well, every other BG & similar games were six character, so we HAVE to do six! AND I WOULD HAVE AGREED! Haha.

I hope others will agree and if this hasn't been brought up by players yet, I don't know how it could have possibly been over looked since that was such a big part of not only the first two Baldurs Gate games but nearly every other good D&D computer game. Maybe the devs won't like me bringing up this idea really at this relatively late stage, but, I hope that we can all see what grander scale 6 characters brings to the table...

I think its 4 because of the amount of background, options, dialogue, pathways to play that they are bringing to the table & it would literally be to expensive to go to 6 man party - either that or we will be waiting another 2 years for the finished game.
Im an old school gamer too but I quite like a smaller party to manage - not that 6 is bad - 4 gets the balanced party fighter/cleric/thief/mage.

I do think Larian studios listen though so who knows what might happen by the time the game is in its final state - but for me 4 is enough to enjoy.

See it's too constraining though. Like, that's literally going to be everyone's party to a T. In Divinity you could mix up classes a lot easier, but this, it's D&D, it's Baldurs Gate, and it needs to be different.

You don't want to take forever to heal or not be able to remove curse / level drain / poison, so you need that cleric. If you don't have a hefty front line fighter you're going to have a bad time. No rogue means eat trap city and no lock picking doors or chest for you which is absurdly dreadful and no one would pick that so literally every party will have a rogue, and similarly to the other 3 no one wants to miss out on having at least some of the vast library of powerful and useful wizard spells and some good AOE for the tougher battles, that is when the wizard/sorc shines. If you had a 6 character party you basically have two slots you can add in some real spice and change up your party. 4 characters is 100% predictable and pretty much may as well be locked in imo.

I firmly agree that a four character party is too small. Honestly even five characters would be an improvement. For all the reasons Aeridyne gave it's too constraining. If we're able to to swap between party members then it results in potentially making some characters less attractive based on what class your main character is, which is the main negative point for me. For instance, I don't like playing fighters or other non-spellcasting classes. My interest is in magic-focused characters like sorcerors, warlocks and wizards. I might play a cleric possibly but that's a long shot. So that means it becomes less likely that I'll have room in my party for other spellcaster companions, which sucks because companions are a huge part of what makes an RPG fun for me. If an RPG doesn't have companions, that's a huge mark against it in my opinion. It makes experimentation harder too since you have less of a fallback. I don't want to have to play through classes I don't find enjoyable to play in order to interact with other characters I might find interesting. I really hope this is one of those things that they decide to change when they see it in early access because I can see it really taking away from the experience.

If they were to make a 6 characters party now, with all the permutations involved, we would get the game in 3 years, maybe.

I haved played d&d since first edition and the class structures were more true in previous editions. In the about 15 campaigns I have played in d&d 5e it has very rarely been a fighter/cleric/rogue/arcane caster set up, and I have normally played 4 man group. There is nothing you really need. You have short rest that gives plenty healing and long rest heals you completely. For locked doors and traps you dont need rogue anymore. Anyone can have the prof. If you do want some healing mid fight, a paladin, bard, druid or sorcerer (with subclass) will do the trick. Most spell casters gets decent AoE spells, and any warrior class will work for tanking (fighter, paladin, ranger, barbarian). Even other classes tanks just as well if you build them up for it.

Personally I am probably going to run around and solo most of the content with 1 character that is buffed by the other 3. I am just going around with a group sometimes to hear the banter etc. 2 more buffers would be nice, but having 6 characters in a turned based game is going to slow it down quite a bit and many will also be put off by the need to level up, equip and control so many characters.

Fortunately D&D 5e eliminates the rigid roles of old school 2nd Edition AD&D so your six character party isn't necessary.

Every character can spend Hit Dice to heal themselves at a short rest.
Every character can stabilize a fallen comrade.
Clerics, Rangers, Bards, Druids, Paladins all have access to healing spells.
Fighters can heal themselves with second wind.
It is also my experience playing and DMing D&D 5E that healing spells are very inefficient (they don't scale well) and the absolute best way to "heal" is through crowd control and damage (Kill them before they damage you).

You don't need a rogue if you want a stealthy character. If you choose the Urchin background your Warlock, Cleric, Wizard or Fighter can be proficient in Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Thieves' Tools and Disguise KIt.

You can make a Githyanki Abjuration Wizard (will be my first EA character) who wears Chain armor, wields a Great-sword who psionic jumps into the front line.


D&D 5E is a much more flexible system than old school D&D giving you the flexibility to create an effective and balanced adventuring group with a smaller number of characters.

Hey OP, this issue has been discussed quite extensively in some other threads, so I won't repeat myself here. Suffice it to say that FWIW I completely agree with you. The party-size reduction to four is a major strike against this game for me, perhaps the biggest negative of all. And this would be the easiest of Larian's controversial game design choices to address by giving us an optional toggle to increase party-size up to six with the understanding that combat encounters have been designed and balanced for a party-size of four. No extra work for Larian other than a little bit of UI work. But Larian's track-record is against giving players any optional toggles, so this can happen only if some caring and considerate person out there puts in the time to create a mod for it.

As others said, this was discussed already in other threads and I would like to have more companions to have more variety, but in short: the latest versions of D&D create adventures balanced for a 4-man-party, and there´s only 5 companions so the possibility of a highest party count is marginal at best.

That's somewhat of a rationalization for a false dilemma because not every member of the party has to have dialogue. If that is the reason for limiting the party to four then fine, limit a party of six to having up to four characters with dialogue and the other two can be silent henchmen who fill an important role of providing redundancy to class and skill sets. Heck, I'd be fine with only one member of a six character team having dialogue with the other four being relatively silent henchmen. Often when I play BG & BG2 I use anywhere from 1-4 custom NPCs with only 4-1 organic NPCs who have dialogue. The only time I ever played with all five non-custom NPC personalities with their native dialogue was the first play through. After that I would substitute 1-4 custom NPCs that I would roll up and then rotate the native NPCs in and out. I really don't care if every member of my party has dialogue as long as I can have an ideal party of six.

The more I read the comments in the forum the more I get the impression that Larian is basically just going to put D&D skins on a different game so it will look like D&D, but it won't really play or feel like D&D. I guess it's a good thing I can still play BG & BG2.

Well, the thing is in 5e the campaigns are based in 4 players, the monsters and creatures like the gnomes, not-green-goblins, cambions, Ilithids, dragons, etc look exactly like ingame in the PHB books, over 95% of the actual ruleset of 5e is being implemented ingame, some references about the lore, like Astarion having problems with running water or the question "What are parents?" of the githyanki Lae`zel; skill mechanics or action-based combat,etc

I understand that feels different from 2e of BG games or 3e of NWN games, but that´s how it is 5e now. You could like it or not, but it´s still D&D.

Believe me, Larian could mess up the game in many ways, but in lore or mechanics if they do something, they have permission and direct approval of WoTC. they´re very invested in the project.

Well, unless something changed, that’s not going to be the case here. No matter if you use companions or self-made mercenaries they will talk. Larian RPG is not a traditional single protagonist RPG. It’s multiplayer RPG which is possible to be played in SP. As such for the most part you have full control over your companions and you will want to use them. See this demo around 37:55. Keep in mind that here Swen approaches the situation with the companion.

Frankly, I found D:OS2 tedious to play with only 4 characters as I felt the game wasn’t tailored well to managing all the party by one player.
And am not sure if it will play bette for worse in BG3. There is visible attempts to make BG3 companions more of... well, companions. Which is great. Still many systems and designed seem to be transferred over.

Round two...

I wont argue that 4 is somehow better than 6 as the people who want a six man party ..want a six man party...my views are:

1. If you love BG1&2 and that is your benchmark then you need to potentially view this as a whole new D&D game as Larian Studios are not trying to make BG3 in the same literal sense as 1&2. This is their game,20 year later & you can just see how much it means to them & how much effort is going into the game - watch panel from hell.
2. I stopped playing D&D 15-20 years ago but from what I can tell 5E is designed for a 4 party crew - Solaster seems to be doing the same thing.
3. Yes the game will of course use some of Larian studios IP but to say its just a re-skin is nonsense - do they have unlimited funds..no..they do have 300+ people (who they are paying salaries to) working on the game - they cannot do everything, I think Sven mentioned limitations on a couple of occasions during the latest discussion.
4. Absolutely its D&D everything they are doing is trying to bring 5E rules as closely as they can (& in a format that works for video gaming) it has a massive D&D vibe - you cant say it has any other, its a D&D game plain & simple.
5. It may not be in EA but multi classing is coming to the game 4 party members can realistically play as more than 4 (well give you more variants & play styles) & at level 10 max you wont overly penalise your character build (now im going back a long time here but as I recall multi classing could be weaker at higher levels - not so much earlier on...but alot of fun to play).


Ok..hit me with it...

I prefer a 4 member party. Turn based combat (which is very much preferable to real-time w/ pause for a number of reasons) will be slow with bigger parties, especially if you throw animal companions, familiars and summons into the mix. Also, Larian has wisely chosen to opt for fewer companion all over with the trade-off being that each character will be considerably more fleshed out. Finally, a smaller party makes the party selection/character build decisions matter more. Larian has got this.

With companions filling double duty as companions and playable shells the math isn't as straightforward. D:OS2 companions were quite lacking - mostly I think, due to having be vague enough so they can be whatever potential Coop buddy will want them to be. BG3 companions have already have shown a bit more personality though.

Combat is slow in BG3 because of its specific combat system, and not because of party size. If a party size of six would make combat more slow, that's not the fault of the party size but rather the fault of the combat system. So don't try to make party size the fall-guy for the flaws of the combat system.

Also, more fleshed-out companions at the cost of fewer companions is not a "wise" tradeoff by any means. If that's the case, why not go down to party size of two? Then we could have even more fleshed-out companions!! It's merely a reflection of your personal preference to have fewer companions. Everything in a videogame is an interconnected mass of tradeoffs and balancing acts. It is perfectly reasonable for other fans to expect both very well fleshed-out companions AND a significant number of companion choices if that's what they want. And the tradeoff to have all that could come in some area, for example by not having all voiced characters or not having romances. There is no automatic or default justification that the tradeoff should have to be fewer companions.

One of my dream for this game is a party of 6 , especially for variety.
I don't care D&D 's standard number of players. I want to customize my team and 5 companions instead of 3 is MANY more combinations.

(I can see you Larian : an owlbear cub, a spider or an intellect devorer is NOT a companion).

Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium would suggest that it's not a terrible idea. At least sometimes, for some games. Also skills in DE where kind of like companions as well.

Either way, it has nothin to do with BG3

I don't understand how this statement leads to that conclusion. I mean I do, but I don't. That in a smaller party selection/character build matters more? To me It matters less because you already know exactly what the rest of your extremely limited party is going to be. Arguably I would tend to say anything other than a fighter/paly/barb/ranger is going to be in essence a handicap. Unless you have no qualms about resting after every fight to regain your spells but I always saw that as terribly unrealistic for the story although in most games it doesn't matter. The smaller your party is, and the less companions there are to choose from, the more limited in choices you've been given, the less flexibility you have... how does that add up to you? All of that is less options, not more. More limitations. Sure you could argue that makes your character choice matter more (but it really doesn't as the more limited everything is, the more obvious your choice becomes out of necessity) and that is not what previous BG games have been which have all had plenty of choice on your character composition and six characters allows for a more diverse and colorful group than 4. Why not just make it one character then and make it a super painful choice so it really, really matters? Because it's silly and it's not BG and the same goes for 4 imo.

Its just not going to feel like BG to me without a six character party. It's just not. And a lot of other people seem to agree. And I know for certain there are a lot of other older gamers out there like myself that are usually silent but will feel the same way. D&D lore / world etc yeah but it's going to feel like DOS II with BG world skin. I mean, it's literally almost the exact same game, just change the story / setting. (Which is a lot yes, but I mean mechanics wise and how it will play.) And I'm not always one of those people that necessarily wants to see changes in a game. They could make 15 games just like DOS II with different or continuations of stories and I'll probably love the heck out of them all. They could be D&D games too and I'd enjoy them just as much or even more. But were talking about BG here... It SHOULD be similar to the others. Just because 4 characters is easier and they can probably use a bunch of the same net code etc doesn't mean that's what they should do. I'm frankly sick of co op games always being 4 players now, like some unspoken rule.

For those who want 4 person because they think turn based with 6 would be too tedious - the solution could pretty easily be able to choose max party size at the start.

And it seems just as many or more want 6 as there are that are fine with 4. So why not at least have the option then.

A lot of people like to make their entire party from scratch anyway, the game might not have that option but a few more characters even if they aren't fully voiced or have hardly any interaction is FINE with me, I just want options for characters and more than 4 characters for my party. (Even DOS II had more than 4 characters with a story) I guess if you can only make your main character from scratch that's better than nothing. And adding more characters with only dialog and not necessarily putting them into the cut scenes is again fine by me. I wonder if unfortunately they might have gone so far with a lot of the cut scene stuff that it's painted them into a corner and thus they don't WANT to add any more characters because that means voicing a sh**load of more stuff and animations, where as in an older game it would have been easier as the voicing wasn't as much and adding the text dialog wouldn't have been very difficult. Even in Divinity II though my gf & I greatly preferred to use a mod that allowed 6 character party and also scaling monsters up a bit. I actually enjoy the combat, so more of it is just fine by me and actually a good thing! Combat didn't feel repetitive to me in in DOS II or grindy which was a very good thing. Baldurs Gate I & II had a ton of different party members you could pick up which would be fantastic to have in BGIII even if not all of them were voiced etc entirely.

Can you get by with a 4 person party? Seems just as many people think so as do that six is what it SHOULD be. And sure, obviously if they make the game for 4 it will be doable, but I don't WANT to just get by with 4. I long for the flavor and combinations possible with 6. And not just there are 6 total characters here you go, deal. Like, there SHOULD be MORE as there was in BG I & II.

And I don't give a h*ll how long a game takes, I never want a rushed game and would always prefer the creator take just as much time as they need/want to so that's a silly argument I think, that it will take longer.

Summons won't be like they were in DOS II, they will be weaker and much more temporary rather than summoning 4 things literally every fight which was exactly what I did in DOS II because the summons were just that good and you could bring them in every fight so why not. D&D is not going to be summon city like that so again I see that as a weak argument. And again, making the option to choose at the start solves the issue of people who want a smaller party, just like how they had lone wolf mode to pare it down even further if people wanted super streamlined combat. But again, lets not forget the flip side of that in that some people will enjoy the combat and larger fights with more characters taking longer will be just fine with some people, like me, and many others. I can understand the abandoning of real time with pause for the turn based for the way they are doing the game and the environments, camera etc everything like that but to limit the party to 4 characters and there not be any other options, well that's just not going to be cool. And if there aren't more characters to choose from to add to your party as well, again that just seems super limited and again not really in the BG vein since both games, especially the 2nd had a ton of extra characters to choose from that you could add to your party.

And again one more time, just because you CAN get by with a 4 person party you can make the same argument for even smaller parties too until you are only playing the main character and your other party members if any are just uncontrollable NPCs. But would that game be BG? Not really. Would a 4 member party game be BG? Not really. Would a game that doesn't have a plethora of party members to choose from like the previous ones be BG? Not really. But would a game with a 6 character party and lots of different characters to choose from be BG? Well yes it would! Ding ding ding, we have a winner.