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

Yeah this is exactly where I am as well.

The 6 party members are clearly a part of BG according to me because it leads to many things :

- more character management (during fights, leveling, inventory...)
- more differents party composition
- more interactions/dialogs in the party

More is not a problem if player can choose the number of companions they want to play with. 4 is a problem for all those that want to play BG3 a little bit more like BG1/2 with 6 characters in their party.

This is my biggest reason for wanting six as well. I want those extra few slots for one or two characters that don't really contribute to the "power" of my party but who I want in the party for roleplaying reasons. With four, this is simply out of the question, and you are forced to be completely technical, even a min-maxer, in how you set up your party.

Take for example my complete aversion to having a character like Astarion in my BG3 party. I want to play good-aligned, and a vampire spawn is just a huge 'no' for me. However, if party-size were six, I might have my preferred party all set with five of those six slots, and then say to myself: "Hmmm. There's no way I would normally even consider taking Astarion along. But he seems like an interesting character for story/quest/RP reasons, so I'll let him tag along with me for those reasons, just to see how things play out with him." But in a four-person party, there will never ever be a spot for someone like Astarion no matter how "awesome" a character he may be. This is exactly how I've often included Viconia in my generally good-aligned BG parties.

Swen officially answered this question today (the game will have 4, but the engine can support more through mods)

https://youtu.be/S5__muccL1c?t=1481

Well, at least he said that you can have followers and I supposse familiars and summoned creatures...

I wonder if the "followers" part will include your retainer or maid/butler of the Noble Knight background.

I interpreted followers to mean temporary companions for some reason. I don’t know what that is where my mind went. I’ll have to watch again and see if I can glean any hints as to what he meant.

I am pretty sure something of that sort was mentioned earlier.

Yes this was a good interview. I really liked that he specifically said they are designing the UI to be able to easily support someone creating a mod to increase party size to six. I sure hope such a mod will be among the first created, and that will be an automatic add-on to any BG3 game I play. Because party of four is just simply not D&D to me.

I agree its sad that we have to wait for a mod and not say an option we could trigger in the options menu since larian themselves see it as a wanted feature

Also you can rest easy for now, as good companions are intentionally withheld for now. Larian wants to corrupt their players.

I disagree. Going completely technical, or min-maxing, is always your choice. And you've already stated you don't even plan on playing this game so idk what the point is.

I like my games to be challenged, but not overly punitive. If I can play at the hardest difficulty setting modded with 6 characters and hit that sweet spot for me of reasonably hard then I will be very happy.

I think the thing people aren't taking into consideration regarding "min-maxing" your party is that Larian is balancing this game for a 4 person party, so this should become way less of a concern. They will likely have to consider things like alternative tactics and strategies for specific fights due to the 4 party limit and the possibility you won't have X class with X spell/ability. Like D:OS2 I'm sure you'll be able to mod in a larger party, but just like D:OS2 it'll likely make the game completely trivial in every encounter due to the nature of the game balance.

In DoS games you usually pair the 6-man-party mod with a double monster-Stronger monsters-half-Xp mods and you usually end up reaching the sweet spot of balance fun-difficulty

I wonder if the tools would allow to do the same, or something similar in BG3.

Neverwinter Nights was balanced around having a party of 2 (yourself, and a henchmen), it doesn't change the fact that me trying to complete the Beggar's Nest in Chapter 1 as a rogue, with Tomi Undergallows (another rogue), was impossible; Instead, I was effectively forced to take with me a different henchmen for that district, despite the fact that I A) enjoyed playing a single-classed rogue, and B) liked Tomi as a travelling companion (because of his quips and conversations).

So no, I don't particularly feel less concerned just because Larian says that they are "balancing the game for a 4 person party". Maybe, in BG3, I want have a party of 4 fighters (no casters or healers or skill-monkeys) or 4 warlocks (almost no spell slots among the four of them, and no healing capabilities). Increasing the party baseline to 6 would mean that even in situations where you have all party members being the same class, you can generally make up for it, by overcompensating in other areas (and without Min-Maxing).

EDIT: Also, seeing the previews of gameplay, it looks like alot of their "balanced for a 4 person party" also requires that the player not be a casual gamer, but master tactician. I personally don't want to spend 5 minutes tactically placing my party members before each fight. Maybe, just maybe, I would rather just breeze through combat so that I could enjoy the actual PLOT of the game. A party of 6 could also allow that to happen.

Wouldn't it be enough to set the difficulty to easy or normal, if you just want to autofight trough the campaign?

Possibly because then it’s Larian’s responsibility to make the 6 member party option balanced and fun to play. Clearly they’ve made the decision to go with 4 members because they think that’s best for the game they are making. Just upping the count could affect a lot of things that could easily get messy and be less fun for many or most players who then complain it’s rubbish.

It’s probably better to let mods handle that. They’ll probably be a quick dirty one really fast, then others later with people trying to balance throughout the game.

NWN is a terrible analogy. Having a D&D campaign with only 2 characters was always a dumb idea. I’m not sure what BioWare we’re thinking.

Dungeons and Dragons is a game with different classes to fill different roles. That is how the game is designed to be played. You are completely free to make parties that forgo balance, but that will at times make the game harder. That is a feature, not a bug. Your complaints are ridiculous.

The game does not need to be balanced around playing suboptimally. I say that as someone who has tried to do 6 wizard parties in BG and IWD. The game should not also be balanced around requiring strict min maxing, and I have seen nothing in BG3 that suggests this is the case.

Yes I noted this too in the interview. These were the two things that made me happy with that interview.

The joy of having more companions in my party and all the attendant increase in intra-party interactions and banter as well as interactions with the world are way more important and meaningful to me than any aspect of combat. So the combat becoming trivial/non-challenging/unbalanced is a price I will happily accept for all the added fun I get from having a 6-person party.

WEll thats a shame, esepcialy since the modding thing is irrelevant.
Youd have to revamp the entire game to make a 6 member party fun.

And from what ive seen in OS2 i dont expect an active modding scene for this game.