Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Four is a party. Six is the crowd.

-1

Unlike DOS- where you could make everyone a hybrid of everything and just add Hydro and Aero on half the party and the other half have Geo, Scoundrel and Warfare - this is Dungeons and Dragons and each class is limited on what they can do and even tough some spells might repeat for a few classes, their class features are unique and only them can bring it to the table.

This means that it's hella restricting only having 4 because you'll miss so much on those jack of all trades classes that cannot be included since you need to min max and follow the basic model of 1 Melee, 1 Healer, 1 Rogue, 1 Magic Caster. It's not diffcult at all to understand that if you have a party of 5 or 6 you can add more versatility and enjoyabilty in the RPG aspect so you can play whatever the hell you want even if they are not the best options/selection.

4 people parties are doomed to either be min maxed so they can take the whole game or forced to multiclass in the future.

I prefer 4 but if people want 6, then why not let them get 6?

More choices good, less choices bad.

At this point it is obvious the game is geared around four players as its the default setting. With the exception of a couple encounters four has been adequate.

Personally, I think there is room for compromise. Make the default four, and then allow a Charisma bonus of +3 or +4 allow for an additional one to two followers. Will that make some people optimize for beastly parties with OP charisma classes? Sure, but twinks are going to twink regardless.

For me the main reason I would want 6 instead of 4 is RP reasons mostly. Sure it would be easier to play with 6, and I like easy, but I'm just as happy as it is with 4.

Yeah. But I'm not making shit up and I know what I'm saying.


No, they aren't. 6 men clean the same encounter quicker.
With the correct system in place, 4 men tend to level up more on the long run and become individually more powerful. That doesn't make the battles with six characters "slower". Not in a game where Initiative queue is mixed between allies and enemies.
If anything makes the player intervene more often on the action rather than watching long sequences of enemies doing their own things.

You people are giving gravity to a "design problem" that simply doesn't exist.



You just make the total of exp gained split among the number of party members. Which is precisely what BG1 and 2 and what made viable playing the game with six party members OR playing it in solo with a single character leveling up way faster.
A lot of people played Icewind Dale with 4 custom characters rather than six just to have them level up more, for instance.

As I said in the other thread about this topic (the GOOD one, with the proper arguments for it) people should not misunderstand one thing: the request of having a party of six does not come from the NEED to have them to achieve things, but from the enjoyment that comes from having more variety, more interesting tactical options and mix-ups and carrying on more companions questlines in the single player campaign.



We know that Larian's current plan is to force the players to COMMIT to their selection of three party members and get rid of the others after act 1, like they did with DOS 2.
Many, myself included, think that is a terrible mistake and they should revise it, but even if it was a final decision it would make for an even stronger argument in favor of carrying more companions with you.



And absolutely nothing is preventing these four players from doing what they were doing anyway. Maybe even having two additional NPCs to carry around, if they want.

Wow, I did not know that. That is indeed terrible. So you are either committing to a party where you like the characters, or the party that makes the game easier. Like I have not yet explored the nuances of the combat system and I do not have the excessive knowledge of the source. So my game is very difficult, especially when I break up the usual meta of tank/healer/caster/rogue. And I then "only" have 20 hours or so to try out what composition works for me and what people I actually want to bring.
This locks me out of content effectively and forces me to choose one build over the other instead of adapting constantly or going back to a trusted setup for the time being. Not a fan.

This is one of the best posts I've read on the topic, I agree 100% and have nothing to add (which is pretty rare)

For me its even simplier-4 people party makes is a DoS game,6 people party makes it a Baldurs Gate game. There is enough things basically copypasted from Divinity already,yet the game is titled Baldurs Gate,so maybe it will be good having something more in common with classic series.

This is very incorrect. They already throw several enemies at a party at a time. The challenge rating of a single enemy is judged on a 1v4 basis. These fights are already over the top on their own. They might need to add 1 or 2 tops more enemies to each area. Maybe.

A green hag may be CR3 but is definitely on the upper end of hard. One attack can pretty reliably one shot someone at level 2 which is when you can meet it in BG3. Goblins are CR 1/3 but this ignores placement and numbers. Those encounters are much higher than that. Mind you that CR is 1 creature vs 4. We often face bands of 8 or more. Even the random potshot with a short bow doing 8d6+16 will drop most characters on their own.

Add in the bugbears, gnolls with multiattack, and so on, and it definitely falls on the upper end regardless of the situation you come across per book rules. CR only makes sense as long as the party comp is constant. The moment you lose someone that's a drop of 25%. The relative CR goes up then and you can quickly crest into a death spiral. CR in general carries a lot of problems and this only highlights them. It isn't the defeater argument you think it is.

Except fights last WAY longer than 3 rounds as is. In my earlier post like I mentioned they would need to add 1, maybe 2, more enemies per area because there's already a large scale imbalance on most encounters as is. Add in the elemental effects and Original Sin remnants, the game is so far off balance from 5E anyway. Plus they add other abilities like with the phase spider's spit. The 5E version of that monster can't do that and it changes fighting them dramatically. You can easily keep the scale of current encounters, normalize properly to the 5E ruleset, add maybe 1 or 2 more enemies, and accommodate a 6 person party with ease.

I too would like to have a party of 6 characters. As many others have stated already it provides more variety and freedom to play around with differect classes and builds. Balance and mechanics should't be to hard to tweak around a 6 character party. Not sure how it would affect the overarching story through.

4 is a party but 6 is also a party.

Divinity: Original Sin II have 4 men party and lone wolf and both modes are fun. I don't understand why people would outright dislike the option for party of 5 or 6. Larian can balance it just like they balanced the Lone Wolf mode and people can have fun with either 4 or 6 party size. Problem solved. Win-win.

How about 5 so everyone meets in the middle?

My post post got glossed over in the back pretty quickly.

But I had mentioned my feedback on why the game should not be 6 players since its not balanced for that as per dnd 5e ruleset

The game of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and its encounters is balanced on two basic premises.

Each adventuring day, a party of three to five adventurers should be able to handle six to eight Medium or Hard encounters (DMG, page 84).
Most combat encounters should last 3 rounds on average (DMG, page 274).
This means that the characters playing the game should have enough resources–including hit points, spells, special powers, etc.–to last roughly 18 rounds of combat. In addition, the party should take at least two short rests per day to recover a portion of their spent resources.

So basically Larian has took the average of what the balance is currently made for. Its NEVER 6 players if you do that you actually have to make the game HARDER by changing the CR by tweaking numbers all across the board on top of much higher DCs for everything.

But the argument for having a 5th i could easily see since it normally is per CR in the monster manual on top of the current Environmental effects causing a lot more damage (( they need to remove this ))than you would find an in actual dnd tabletop setting.

Remove all the extra unneeded environmental damage that isnt a thing in 5e,
Remove the healing on food,
Put back that number of value on healing into potions of Healing
Add more short rests

By doing these things a party of 4 or 5 should be fine.

Jaz

Please Larian, of course I want 6 companions, but I'd settle for five. Four just feels so constricting. and it feels weird to adventure and then go to camp and some npc is sitting there giving me the side eye for leaving them at camp.

I quoted your whole post. What got missed?

This sounds like a case of the Pot calling the Kettle Black. You're accusing me of "armchair developing" while second guessing their decision to go with a party of 4 in the first place, and telling me how easy it would be to change it to 6. You don't know that. I'm sure they have very good reasons for choosing a 4-person party in their engine, and their story. And since we don't know their development process, we have no right to second guess their decision on this. On top of that, I would actually prefer a 6-person party, so don't go accusing me of making this point to "legitimate my bias". Because I'm looking past my personal bias to understand that I don't know the development process, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they're doing. That's why I'm saying "stick with 4". To demand to the developers they change their game design to a 6 person party simply because we feel like it, and because BG1 & BG2 had a 6-person party is entitled, and selfish. Larian has proven that they know what their doing in this genre. It's their game, it's their art. Not ours. Let them create their game and their art in their own way. Judge a game for what it is, not for what it isn't.

+1 to this

Seems to me like a lot of people just want to play the game the same way they've played others in the past, rather than put the effort in to learn a new system

I want a 5-6 (preferably 5) charcater party for a number of reasons, but I will say that this is very much the exact time to ask Larian to change the party size. Early access is here to see what works and what needs changing, and if Larian ultimately agree with the people that say the party size needs changing, then let them. If they think that it's not worth it to change the party size then it won't matter what we said. From what I understand Larian is more than capable of standing by their decisions, even ones they apparently later admit weren't the right decisions. They gave us early access because they wanted our feedback on what they were created. Furthermore just because it's their art doesn't mean their vision is automatically the best version of what it could be. More input combined with thoughtful consideration of that input is one of the best ways to create something great and I don't think we should automatically assume that their plan is the best plan; plenty of studio's who have created great games in the past have included stuff that on hindsight just didn't work as intended.

I just hope that if they keep the party size at only 4, they tune the combat down to a more manageable level because as it stands, the game's difficulty is such that a player with fairly average skill is painfully restricted by such a small party size.