Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Party Size

Is a party size of four a firm decision? It felt kind of bad to kick the cleric. I made a ranger. There was a fighter that it just seems like I'm supposed to keep around. That left me to pick two out of mage, thief and cleric.
It would be cool to have a tank, a healer, a thief, a mage and then one slot left for a class I just want play around with. A druid or a Barbarian or something. Otherwise I have to make my character one of those four.

Nearly everyone hope they'll change and allow parties of 6 like in the original games.

My main concern is the same as yours... With parties of 4 I won't probably ever play many specific classes like the druid, the barbarian, the monk or the bard...

The biggest problem for me (based on steam article) after act 1 you can "venture forth" just a party size companions, so that means if I made own character -2 origin hero ....and if they add more companion/origin hero the situation will be worse in my opinion . I hate when a game force me to choose like this and can't keep/swap them later. I mean it's ok if they left because of my choices or personality but not force it like this. In DOS 2 had a similar "event" and hated too.. I like to swap companions and know them better... SO a bigger party yes could be better especially if we got more companion... (also sorry for bad english)

I often play as a bard in Baldur's Gate or Fighter/Warlock, Fighter/Bard. So I hope party size will be bigger than 4 or they give me reason to pick bard.

I think 5 would be perfect, 4 is really not enough and 6 might actually be too much imo

Having bigger party would have been great (I mean, more banter is always welcome).
I guess the reasons behind the party of 4 are the system being primarily balanced around the party of 4, and the coop. I do not think we will get a bigger party, which sucks a bit (party of six means every encounter has to be rebalanced, to account action economy. DMG guideline is making them harder by 50% exp wise).
Luckily you don't have to force yourself into the archetypical party. Bard can fill the role of the rogue's, he is pretty much the skill monkey of 5e (you get expertise in a couple of abilities, which means double the proficiency for say lockpicking, and you add half of your proficiency too all abilities, you are not proficient in)

All you really need is most likely a cleric in the party, the rest is pretty much "pick whatever you want", so long you have someone with decent dexterity pick "sleight of hand" proficiency.
In my first playthrough, my warlock took the lockpicking duty :p

The 1+ 3 companion limit, well... feels limiting. There's 5 companions, and having to pick only 3 of them, even ones that you might not like, simply because they have class features that you might need feels kind of bad? Like these people are pretty interesting and I want to get to know them better but the game by its nature doesn't let me because I 'need' to have a rogue, I 'need' to have a wizard, and I 'need' to have a cleric, etc. So that just blocks out using the other companions because there isn't really any flexibility unless you chose to make up for those deficits before you create your character.

Having 1+ 5 would at least give you that flexibility to switch in someone else (if for instance there are actually more than 5 companions, which, considering Larian's track record, doesn't seem likely, unfortunately) so I can try playing a different class than usual or something or build a party of people that I want to be around instead of people who I might not vibe with.

Like... I understand their possible reasons for this implementation, but like... it feels bad?

I honestly feel like a party of 5 would be the sweet spot. As it is now is absolutely too limiting, especially if you're not super good at the combat and you need the extra security of having a tank and a healer. I for one am only okay at the combat and I just would not be able to manage without a tank and healer at all, even with them I need to constantly heal with potions and food. Also here's something important to note:

For me Baldur's Gate = Party of 6

It allows the protagonist to build out a more interesting and nuanced crew with that 5th and 6th slot to fill.

Unfortunately when they make these things so much like films I'd imagine it's just way more work and way more money spent on art assets, acting, animation and such. Back when it was just a paper doll, a 2d portrait, and a banter reel, you could do a lot more. Hell go big party like we're on the Darkside of Xeen again hehe. But nowadays I guess it all needs to look like a movie for a never ending cutscene. I suppose I should be happy that its not a party of 3 given what goes into making the modern companion, but yeah, 6 would certainly be my choice for BG. I don't think everyone on the team necessarily needs to have a huge personality at all times for it work and be satisfying. Get a couple Kivans in there, some randos who don't talk much to balance it out? lol

Like does anyone even remember what Yoshimo did except in the first dungeon and the last? You can sink a lot of downtime with the mutes, so long as they get a solid arch at some point to make them memorable. Then again this is EA, so maybe we're just getting the 5 canonical villains here and the rest of the B team roster comes later? If they expanded the party to 6 for the full release that'd certainly be pretty clutch.