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

I meant more the internal panels (inventory, equipment and so on) rather than the basic UI, but still, thanks for the screen.

I thik we should at last try it ...
Especialy when the world is still young and adaptable.

Baldur's gate is the most replayed D&D CRPG of all time

It had 25 recruitable companions and a full party of 6 members.

In terms of the possible party combinations, the "25 recruitable companions" is the more important part of the equation than the 6 member party cap, but they are both relevant.

As pointed out earlier in this thread there are many more combinations available with the cap at 6 than there are with the cap at just 4, provided we have a decent number of total companions available. The number of combinations practically doubles when going from 4 to 6 if the total number of companions is raised to say 10 rather than just the 5 currently available. This increases even more dramatically again if we go from a possible 10 companions to say 15 or 20 companions in the roster.

Right now initial impressions are being based on the 5 recruit-able companions currently available in EA, and a full party of 4 members. But there's no way it could end up just being 5 companions or just one or two beyond that thrown in later as some have suggested. That would be a crazy hard fail from the team holding the crown right now. They'd need like a dozen companions just for it to even hold a torch to the epic glory of BG1. So I fully expect them to double or triple the number of companions by the time this thing goes live just to do it justice by the BG standard. I mean they got what, a dozen writers on it? Seems about right.

It makes sense for Larian to tease them in smaller numbers like this too, so that their EA can focus on the party interactions/compositions they feel need the most feedback, and probably more importantly to give us a reason to keep tuning in when they drop their larger patches to expand the content. But there are bound to be a lot more companions, and if that's the case, a full party of 6 is going to give a huge amount of variety in party composition over just 4... even accounting for a few companion pairings that might not be compatible long term without things coming to blows inside the camp.

There are plenty of amazing ways to make an awesome 4 person game by design, or to make a game with only 2 characters when the goal is a Kurvitz style masterpiece. But we're not taking about just any game. This is the heavy weight title we're talking about! This is Baldur's Gate III

It really should be trying to distill the essence of what made the other two preceding titles so rad, and part of that was the variety of possible party compositions. I just can't see the logic that says giving us fewer characters in our group somehow gives us more choices, or better or more interesting choices. it just doesn't pencil for me. Closes off more doors than it opens and diminishes the replay in the long run. Creating a party building vibe that's concordant with the previous titles in the franchise, and building it out with those kinds of limits in mind is what I'd dig.

I really think the party of 4 is going to become more problematic later on, when the encounters scale to epic territory. This is why a lot of us are hearing the internal alarm bells sounding, and trying to argue for a fix now, while there is time to fix it. I mean we definitely expect a game with a Dragon combat or two eventually right? That's going to be a lot harder to pull off in style with just 4, while still maintaining a classically epic sensibility. I mean unless the plan is just to toss us a bunch of non controllable friendlies? This seems to be the go-to approach in many of these EA battles right now, and maybe it works alright when there are narrative reasons (like "the Blade of Frontiers!" sounding his horn, or NPCs that are part of the story) but as a player I feel less invested in the encounter when this is overused. I'd rather have a party of 6 that I can fully control and really work to defeat the opposing crew, than half a dozen random friendlies appearing in every other encounter, just to serve as fodder so that the combats can be balanced by teams/sides.

Just like a good DM, a good difficulty setting in the options should allow everything in these encounters to scale, whether the player elects to cruise with 6 people or just 4.

But still, if you really want it to hit the nostalgia button and go for broke, I'm chanting 6 6 6! Even though I know I said I'd tap out, the gravitational pull of this thread just seems inexorable for me lol

i am obviously in the minority here but i actually like smaller parties more.
my sweet spot is probably 3.
just wanted to add my opinion.

Its been brought up before but just to highlight that when there is a party of 6 players you also get more opportunities to play different equipment or spell loadouts. I think it'd be particularly nice for spells and arcane casters esp since it makes preparing utility spells more viable. Right now they really need to focus on dmg but if you have like another wizard or bard in the group you can have one dude wrecking fire balls and another with like abjuration or going illusion style.

With 6 there is more room to redupilcate class but with a different focus, after the core 4 the fifth and sixth slot is where the party variety comes into play.

The prob with everyone can do everything, is that you have to long rest and change loadouts constantly if you want to try something off key. So instead you just go with whatever is most OP for that archetype.

In BG1 by the time you got to the Friendly Arm inn you had Charname, plus Imoen and Montaron/Xzar pairing. The Khalid and Jaheira pairing came soon as you got to the Inn. These were cool because they were already grouped together. So you had the Harpers or Zhents choice pretty early and a reason sometimes to see one chunked with amusing one liners from the other companion.

There was just way more gameplay nuance involved in selecting a party composition and who to ditch or switch. In the Beregost area you could pick up a Bard or another Fighter. There was a Ranger or Cleric just outside town. By the time you reached the mines you had already encountered like a dozen possible companions. That's the vibe that's missing right now for me with only 4.

+1 This is why I'm hoping for more recruitable companions in later chapters, it was always so much fun to build your team over the course of the game.

I truly hope so. If Larian have us pick our 3 companions during chapter 1 and then lock us to those 3 companions for the rest of the game , then the 4 character party limit will feel even worse.

Baldurs Gate I & II had a ton of different party members you could pick up which
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.

TBH the amount of different characters you can choose from matters but the max amount of companions within the party straight up doesn't matter after me. Yes, storywise it helps since you can have more interactions in there and between the characters.

But on the mid-maxing side of things it makes it harder. I made 1 run with 6 characters in BG 1&2 , ended up with a 4 man party very quick ^^. Mostly because BG1&2 had a very silly solution for exping in the game lol.

While I understand the reasons for preferring a larger party, I can't say I think it would be an improvement in BG3.

EA seems to play OK with a party of four; if you expand the party size, I can see 2 problems related to the turn-based combat being used.

- the number of enemies in encounters would also increase, leading to even longer encounter resolution, when some of them are pretty turgid already. This could, perhaps, be alleviated by using fewer, but more powerful enemies.

- increased party size would exacerbate problems with party characters blocking each other, which you can't resolve because of the limitations of turn-based movement. This is less easy to alleviate, as it would mean re-working the game world to have less choke points, many of which are related to the significantly vertical nature of the game world.