With a 4 man party virtually every spell that requires concentration just blows. Doing pretty much anything breaks concentration, and its not like pnp where the dm can scale things on the fly based on what the PCs are doing on the regular. The way they have the combats set up here, I don't even know why they bothered implementing concentration as a thing. But at least if we had 6 its somewhat more viable for one party member to be running interference. Give the priests a reason to cast something other than guiding bolt lol.
I wish they'd at least try it before deciding apriori that it would hose everything they've built so far.
I keeping hearing how 5e on the table top is balanced for 4, or 3-5 which the dmg calls "ideal." That's because in PnP most DMs will have trouble prepping and managing a campaign for more than 5 people. A typical dining room table seats 6. So sure, 5 seats for the players and the gamemaster at the head probably is ideal in PnP. But this is a computer game!
Why should we settle for less than the max? 6 is the max
6 is generally acknowledged to be upper limit, and its of course harder to run a campaign for a party that size. But again, this is a computer game, it isn't one dude running the show. This is more like having 20 DMs, who had a year just to plan out the campaign. They should be able to make it work for an epic size party, which is 6.
The party dynamic runs differently in a single player cRPG than it does on the table top. Here's a great article extolling the merits of smaller parties in a typical table top session... very little of it actually applies to our situation, for the simple reason that we don't really have 4 players. We have one player controlling 4 PCs. But it'd be cooler if they were controlling 6!
Seriously, I just go down the list there and nod, but with the caveat that this situation isn't typical and this isn't like a standard session. This is Baldur's Gate
While on caveats, I do think Multiplayer has different needs on balance, and 4 is maybe more appropriate. But I don't think even there that most people will log a 4 man MP session. Co-Op I'm sure is just much easier to organize. But BG really has to nail it for SP, and for that they just can't go wrong with 6. 6 is the money play!
A full party of 6 also mean they can't just gimp out with lemming style controls for party movement. If there are 6 PCs + summons on the screen that means they need solid pathing for the party movement. Right now they can maybe get away with ham fisted controls and body blocking chain magnets individual jumps and whatever. Whereas to do 6 they'd need to streamline and make it hum proper. They should be doing it now so there is time to iron out the kinks.
Isn't that the whole point of doing an EA anyway, to see how far they can take it?
