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

I got to page six before I realized that everyone who wants a party size bigger than 4 has this weird assumption that they need a tank, healer, rogue, and caster.

Guys, this game is based on D&D, not an MMO. You don't need to have a tank or a healer or a rogue or a caster. There are no tanks in D&D anyway! The closest you can get is a paladin with sentinel and a polearm, but that's it. I can't tell you how many times I sat down with two life clerics, or or two wizards, or three wizards (because everyone loves wizards for some reason). And you make it work. You solve your problems with the tools you have available. It makes it different every time because you don't have the same party every time you play.

The fact that so many people are spreading misinformation tells me they never played D&D 5e, which this game is based on. You don't need a rogue to pick a lock. That's just a DEX check. Being proficient with thieves' tools just adds your proficiency modifier (which you can get from a background, meaning anyone can get it). You don't need a "tank" because there's no such thing as AGGRO in D&D. Smart mobs go after the highest threat, which is usually the character with the LEAST armor. Dumb mobs go after whatever is in front of them. You don't even need a healer because Healing Potions are 50g and anyone can get a Medicine Kit. There's even a feat that allows you to heal with it. And lastly, you don't need any spellcaster because you can just buy SPELL SCROLLS.

For the record, I don't care if they party is four or five or six (though I'd prefer four). But don't spew this toxic misinformed nonsense saying you NEED a fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard.

Honestly guys, go play some adventures league and then we can talk.

With respect, you are rong.
Lae'zel is a tank. Until HP bloat / AC reduction is corrected she, and not Gale, is the biggest threat.

Who are we going to use for that dexterity check? Shadowheart? I guess I could give up my stat boost or class specific feat to make myself a second class thief. But I don't really want a swiss army knife? Even with flexibility of 5th ed it makes sense to have a finesse character.

You missed the bit about more banters and the fact that this is putatively the continuation of 6 party game and not a mod on top a 4 party game.

Same with healing -- feats are precious. Why waste them on making a so so healer?

Well,, when your entire argument starts with a strawman there isn't really much to discuss.

But that was what my comment was about. You don't need to pass DEX checks. If you fail the DEX/STR check in the intro scene with the intellect devourer, you don't get an additional companion, but you don't need it. If you fail a Charisma check at the crypt you have to fight your way in instead of getting the upper hand with the rest of the guys inside. But either way the story progresses, and there is no wrong answer. It does change the game through, which is fun and interesting (at least to me). My drow rogue was able to talk her way through everything, but my dwarf ranger was not, and he ended up fighting a lot more.

There is no "waste". If you don't have a healer then maybe you have 2 mages who can do A LOT of AOE damage, and so you shift your strategy that way, or maybe you have 2 rogues who will murder someone before the fight starts. My point is that you don't a rogue or a dex character at all.

Also, I want to reiterate that I'm not against the 6 person party. I really don't care. I just hate when people say that you "need" a certain class when you really really don't. You don't in D&D 5e and you don't in this game.

Edit: Forget to add this. Just because some one has a high AC and health doesn't make them a "tank." It doesn't matter how many hits you can take it no one is hitting you, right? And you may be right in this game. The way they code the mobs may make them attack whoever's in front in them, but in D&D that's not the case. Most intelligent mobs recognize spellcasters as a higher threat than someone with a sword and shield and take them out first. Likewise if they recognize someone is capable of healing. If Larian codes the monsters to be dumb like in MMOs where they attack the "tank" then you're right. I'm making my opinions on the assumption that since they're basing this game off of 5e that they'll also make mobs work in a similar fashion.

Even in mmos mobs tend to attack high DPS dealers if tank doesn't do his job or aggro is somehow broken.

Yeah, that's true. And since everyone gets to disengage as a bonus action in this game it's pretty impossible to make a mob stick to your tank. I see it as a good thing. It makes CC and tactics important. The best tank in D&D isn't even a fighter. It's a totem or ancestral barbarian. At high levels a wolf totem barbarian imposes disadvantage on all attacks against party members within 5ft, which makes mobs REALLY annoyed and focus on the barbarian. Combined with their high health pools and damage resistance, they're way better tanks than fighters, who actually excel at dealing damage thanks for sharpshooter/great weapon master eldrich knights doing 9 attacks in one turn.

People keep saying this, I've seen this over and over. The Disengage change, so far, has no effect on the AI enemies. They don't Disengage, except for Goblins, who already had that as a racial ability even in pen-and-paper 5e. Nothing else really Disengages. My melee characters get attacks of opportunity all the time.

Agree

There's already a way to modify save files instructions can be found here and you can test for yourself how 6 feels or even 5 w/e your want. https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/16

There's even a build for people based on abusing the attack of opuntunity for fighters.

Whilst this topic doesn't personally concern me in either direction (I usually like to play these games solo), I see no real reason to restrict the party size to 4, other than these possible problems.

1. Cinematic Dialogues with party interjections becoming strained the more party members you have.
2. Encounters designed for one party size not scaling well in comparison to another party size.
3. Combat "feeling too tedious" when you have to handle lots of characters.
4. They want to enforce a particular game experience, which they can do by limiting the party size to 4. Lowering the maximum party size makes decisions between which classes you want to take more stringent, which might be something they want to achieve.

Of these 4, I feel the hardest to address is the 1st one. I would guess that if this is something they are unwilling to budge on, it is the reason they are most likely against it. If there is a solution that deals well with this, then I could see a larger party size being allowed.

The 2nd 1 can be partially addressed by dividing XP between party members so the more party members you have, the less XP you get. This does not entirely solve the problem however, because in these types of game character's power does not scale linearly with level and so a party of 3 who is 1 level higher than a party of 6 is probably a bit stronger, especially at break points like 4 and 5. So if you were to balance party size this way, you would probably have to balance the experience around the maximum allowable party size, where reducing the number of party members would then also lead to a reduced difficulty for the player.

The third point is an entirely self inflicted problem by Larian, because they want us to watch fancy animations. If you add an option to skip combat animations, which pretty much every turn based strategy game has, then combat would actually be much, much faster.

The 4th point, you can implement as a soft enforcement. Have maximum allowable party size be a toggle in the options menu and set the default setting for it, to be whatever value provides their intended experience. For those that want to get their own experience, they can then manually override it. I also see no particular reason for the maximum to be 6 here, why not let people go up to 8 or even higher if they want to override this?

I guess point nbr 3 would depend on how Larian handle combat balance. If they could balance it without just adding more enemies then I think that combat could feel more interactive and have a better flow to it with 6 party members instead of 4.

2.) I would vote for directly balancing around 4 party members instead of "the maximum allowable." This will ensure that parties of 6 or 2 are not too unbalanced since these party sizes are not that far off from 4. (If you directly balance around 6 party members, then a party of 2 will probably be very unbalanced)

3.) Assuming divided exp, the # of enemies in each encounter doesn't have to change. Thus, combat will actually feel faster with a larger number of players, because you're effectively taking more turns per combat round! You get to do more stuff more often (This is the same argument for why implementing pop-up reactions doesn't really slow things down)

4.) Currently, I would argue that Larian making party-class composition less important. 5e already is pretty flexible on what classes you need. Then Larian has further reduced class differences by giving out additional bonus actions, weapon actions, and the large amount of consumables. So I don't think #4 is a problem...

I mean, I don't really think we are voting for anything here, since regardless of what we want they going to make their own decision :P

I would probably do something like this. Party XP is divided by 1+the total number of characters in the party. If there are 4 party members, its divided by 5, if there are 5 party members, its divided by 6. You get the idea. This creates a slightly more compact XP spread than if you were straight up dividing by the number of party members. A party of 1 would only earn 3.5 times as much XP as a party of 6. They would obviously balance the XP awarded around the party size they want (in this case, lets say 4), but in my opinion, figuring out how to divide it is the more important part and you want the amount of XP awarded to not scale as high up as it would in smaller parties if you just did straight division.

Lol fair. But in an ideal world, Larian would tally the "votes" expressed in the forums/steam reviews/etc to determine how loved/hated any mechanic is.

Sure, figuring out how to divide exp is the most important. If you do it correctly, you don't need to make any other adjustments to preserve balance.

However, I think that your solution is worse than an unadjusted exp division where you simply divide by # of party members. Keep in mind that 5e levels are not linear. Each level requires more and more experience. I think that this already works to create the "more compact exp spread" that you want, and your solution would double this effect.

e.g., A party of 4 that just reached level 5 (6500 exp).
In a party of 2, each member would have 13000 exp, which is still level 5!
A solo player would have 26000 exp, which is only level 7. I'm skeptical that a single level 7 party member could take on a CR 5 encounter....

In your solution, each member in that party of 2 would have [6500*(4+1)/(2+1)] = 10800 exp, which is even further from level 6.
--a solo player would have 16250 exp, which is level 6. This person would get murdered by a CR 5 encounter.
Seems like ^ would unduly punish small parties.

I know the XP per level is not linear, but the power per level is not linear either. I personally (as someone who is playing the EA solo and will be playing the game solo on release), feel like the balance would be better if XP was not just divided by the party size, because to me it feels like you gain far more power per level than if you just did straight division. I mean, think about it from the perspective of a caster. How many goblins would it take to kill say a level 8 wizard? The moment the wizard throws fireball, most of the goblins will be dead.

I play small parties because I like managing less characters, not because I want an easier game and XP division in most games results in a much easier game when you play them with a smaller party.

I mean, the difference in levels between a party of 4 and a party of 2 is not going to be that much, 1 at most. I don't think there is much danger of a smaller party becoming too powerful.

It's unrealistic that you'd face any # of goblins as an 8th level wizard (XP equivalent to a 4th or 5th level party). A more apt comparison would be facing 2-3 minotaurs. Do you think a level 8 wizard could easily kill 2-3 minotaurs?

And sure, you might play small parties because you like managing less characters. But I'm arguing that the game might be impossible to play with this lessening of exp for small parties. I'm not arguing that solo players should have an easier time than party-of-4 players.

Now, encounter balance is difficult, so you might be right. This is something that only detailed encounter testing can reveal.

Well, if the XP during the EA was done off of a split instead of the way it is done now, you potentially would. Its possible to get to level 4 before the goblin camp already, quite easy in fact.


Yes, because I have no issues killing the 2 minotaurs in the Underdark at level 4 on a Wizard, Ranger or Warlock solo, without abusing stealth, during the EA as is.

I would be surprised if it is impossible, considering it would be awarding more XP than is currently awarded now and its already possible.

I do think that the XP gain needs to be reduced for the EA areas. Especially for the earlier levels. You can go from level 1 to 3 in like, what, an hour or two?
They'll definitely need to adjust exp if they don't want people to reach level 6-7 by the end of Act 1 (I'm assuming Moonrise Tower is technically in Act 1..?)


Hmm okay. I stand corrected. Ranger I can understand (animal companion?), but how do you do it as wizard/warlock? I'm curious. Kiting back using misty step and mirror image??

Yeah kiting with misty step then killing with Magic Missiles using the amulet for wizard. Warlock is a bit tougher, you need to break line of sight occasionally and it relies a lot more on EB spam.