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

I always have found 6 character so much chaos and confusion and don't understand why people are nursing about rules that much. In my pretty party design, i ll create a frontline warrior paladinlike, a healer wizard enchanter or cleric, a rogue of course in different shapeways and a guy with very devourer destruction skills. But 4 character is very limited in a rpg fantasy world ı can see that. 5 is the best in my opinion, you can add whatever you want far from any limitation, and no such chaos as 6.

Seems quite the arbitrary line to draw in the sand.

Still, I'd be fine with five as a lukewarm compromise.
Six is still the superior option by a landslide. Not to mention it makes party formation symmetric (which totally counts) and it's the only option among the three that implicitly allow the other two to exist without any particular issue.

Yeah.. I am undecided. My gut says "six", or at least five. because I like my cleric, but I also like my Druid.(*) In a four man team, there is little room for overlap (although two battlemasters tear through a horde of goblins like butter), and you"ll rarely see the interaction between the two.

With five, one can have the balanced four man party, and then add someone when the situation calls for it, without having to kick my best friends out.

(*)Eh.. Halsin will be on my team right? Come on, big buff custom model Elf.. The guy looks like Orion from Warhammer. No way you're just letting him provide counsel and health potions? Right?

4 is really enough (fighter, two damage dealers and a healer), 6 is already a clutter, means that developers need to have 50% more enemies in every battle making battles longer and screen more cluttered.

Maybe 5 would be a compromise, but 6 party members is an outdated game mechanic already.

Hmmm. What's the origin roster?
Wyll, Gale, Lae'Zel, Shadowheart, Astarion.. I'd say five is a perfect compromise. You can bring the whole gang playing as one of these or bench one if you bring Tav.

I'd bench Wyll. Warlocks, I just don't get them.

LOL let's say it to Owlcat, Inxile and Obsidian (ok, 5 in POE2, but it was 6 in POE1 5 years ago)

Based Temple of Elemental Evil (so far the best implementation of D&D turn-based combat in a videogame) had a party of 5 user-generated characters that could expand up to 8 (with enough charisma) by hiring NPCs across the adventure.
It was glorious.

"Six is outdated" is one of these baseless claims that came out of nowhere.

Then again, as I said several times across the half dozen of threads on this same topic, before even beginning to discuss any party expansion Larian should be in desperate need to address their atrocious control scheme and throw the goddamn chain/unchain system in the gutter.

ROFL. Everyone is dancing around the problem.
In BG3 theres what 6 maybe 7 playable NPCs?????? Versus 15 in BG2 plus tons of modded NPCs.
Theres your answer why its a 4 character party game.
Frankly, Im surprised it isn't a 3 character max party.

Cherry on top is, you will NEVER get modded extra playable NPCs, unless Larian makes more. Thanks in part to cinematic dialogues.

I want it to be a 6 party game. If you feel like having 6 is too much to handle, you could always just choose not to adventure with the other two members. Nobody is forcing you to travel with a full adventuring party.

Larian could make enemies deal more damage instead. This wouldn't make the fights last longer. Also see the end of my post re: individual exp auto-balancing encounters.

I mean, how will this argument work when we have 8+ companions: then we should have a party size of 9? XD

In order for this to happen, Larian should implement individual exp. They balance encounters for 4-5 PCs. If you take 6, fights are initially easier, but you level up slower. This brings the difficulty of the latter fights back to normal. The opposite for a party of 1-3: initially fights are harder, but you'd level up faster.
Everyone wins.

+1

Four is the minimum for a D&D party and pretty much assures that the characters will be of the four core classes since these roles must be covered. A 6-member party allows a bit of variety and encourages play of rangers and warlocks, plus whichever classes get added later (like paladins and druids).

A huge plus to 6 characters is that you will get a lot more interjections in conversations, and a lot more cross-party banter and inter-party conflicts. That will make the game much more alive.

Remember, this is the Divinity engine. This is most likely due to a restriction of the engine used and will not be able to be changed.

Bogus.
Not only there’s no “engine restrictions” in place (how do people even come up with this stuff when it doesn’t make a lick of sense technically speaking?) but the game does support party of six characters already by save file editing.

And yes, the UI scales appropriately too.

And no, that’s not an ideal solution, which is why we are asking for proper official support.

I'll be a naysayer here and argue rather that a large expansion of possible NPCs rather than a raise in party number would be far more preferable, particularly with interactions between NPCS (Like Shadowheart and Lae'el and how Shadowheart leaves if Lae'zel joins) would be highly preferable to me.

I ended up with a bug after having Sovereign Glut in the party and raising two duergar with his spores. After they (the duergar) died in combat, I raised them with the scrolls of resurrection and they were added as party members. They showed up on the inventory screen and everything. Based on that, I'm really not sure there is a hardcoded party size limit.

I have absolutely no idea of what makes you think they would be mutually exclusive.
If anything these features would go hand to hand.

Well, because there isn’t.

I do like when party members get mad at each other and leave, but there are far fewer companions this time around so losing one is a much bigger blow. Also, with a 4 member limit, you drop 1/4 of your party when someone bails until you go back to camp. That's a crippling blow.

6 party members actually supports characters leaving better. Both because you have a larger team that can take the hit, but also because you are more likely to have NPCs at the same time who conflict with one another. Drama!

I personally prefer smaller parties (3 or 4), but I can't help but see that allowing a 6-people party is by far the better option.

Simply put, if you want to play with 4 in a 6-people maximum, you can always just leave 2 slots open. Ideally, the game rewards you with extra XP (many other RPGs already do that).

6-People Party Pros:
- More class builds/role combinations are viable
- More companion banter permutations and overall story

4-People Party Pros:
- Smaller/Faster combat encounters