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

I never said its a good way to get data.
Only possible way.

It's been a heady month. My hound got osteosarcoma in April. She is now a tripawd and doing canine chemo which obviously blows. Though she is doing well now and somehow gets around on 3 legs like you wouldn't fucking believe. But now that the craziest part is over and maybe I can play a game again without losing my marbles from anxiety it would be nice to see a full party of 6 in baldurs gate 3.

You can consider this our make a wish. Whatever works

Come on Larian!


Hehe for real guys...

Do it for the dog.

Larian doesn't even need to change the encounters for a different number of companions. Simply divide exp evenly between all party members that participate in a fight. Maybe put a disclaimer somewhere that "BG3 is intended for and encounters were balanced assuming 4 party members. Parties of 5 or 6 will gain less experience per member and parties of 1-3 will gain more, but your difficulty may not exactly match what we have tuned the game for."

If they wanted to get a bit fancier, then they could try to find a better equation for dividing exp: e.g., divide the experience by (party size)^2 instead of just party size. They'd probably want each member of a party of 6 to get about half the exp that a party of 4 gets..? There exists some equation that effectively balances most combats for any party size.

If they wanted to get even fancier, then they could take inspiration from DAO and auto-level companions you don't take with you to [your PC's level] - 1. This would open up some shennanigans where you solo combats to get a lot of exp, which then auto levels your companions. But eh, I'm fine with that type of exploit.

I would shorten it like this ...
And i believe its litteraly all they need to do.

Part of the issue, is that the entirety of combat is centered around Larian's homebrew rules moreso than 5E, so adding a 5th party member isn't just about adding another person who can attack/cast spells etc. It's another person who can push, create surfaces, carry/throw barrels, abuse broken sneak.

That is going to completely take the existing imbalance, and ratchet it up more than a few notches.

Given that Larian's encounters are already balanced for PCs that can do those things, it's debatable that BG3 encounters/experience would need to be adjusted significantly more than PnP 5e encounters would. After all, the enemies can push, create surfaces, often free disengage, and backstab too. And no encounters should be balanced assuming barrel usage or abusing sneak, so that's not a problem.

But either way, it's vastly easier to adjust the single "Experience Gained" equation than adjust every single encounter, considering many properties such as the # of enemies/enemy abilities/enemy hp/etc.

This has been already argued extensively in the past months actually, but just to reiterate: frankly the "wannabe armchair game designers" that seem to worry so much about "breaking the perfect balance" come off a bit ridiculous, for several reasons:

- because the current balance isn't set in stone to begin with.
- because there's NO proper balance to talk of, only a first tentative effort
- because worrying that this kind of game would strike a perfect balance is a futile goal in itself.There will always be super-knowledgeable players who will know how to break down an encounter exploiting any possible trick in the book even playing solo, while there will always be people who will struggle to get past the tutorial fight at "carebear difficulty" without exhausting their entire reserve of consumable and with two companions dead in the process (mostly Polygon journalists).
- because "Bu-but this would make the fights a bit easier" should be none of anyone's fucking business, if that's what the player prefers, anyway.
- because Larian has a long history of implementing SEVERAL difficulty options, occasionally even significantly different in structure (i.e. "Tactical mode" in DOS 2) aside from just buffing/nerfing numbers. Nothing prevents even the average player to, say, just step up in difficulty a bit to compensate for a bigger party. The implied worry that the "perfect balance" of these multiple settings would be compromised is frankly a bit of a joke.
- because tweaking encounters adding/removing/replacing enemies is not exactly a gargantuan amount of work even to do manually, not to mention that there are even formulas that could somewhat automate the scaling (i.e. how many secondary enemies appear during the fight) to certain extent.

Basically, anything that presumes that the current (or even future) build of the game would be in some sort of holy state of untouchable perfect equilibrium is delusional in itself, even before even beginning to talk about how to "solve the problem".

The only real worry about expanding the default's party (or making a bigger party an option, at least) is that it would also beg for a revamp of controls/UI, because the current ones are already almost comically inadequate for a party of four, making it six would only worsen things.
Which , IF ANYTHING, I would count as an ADDITIONAL reason to push for a party expansion, by the way: it would a perfect excuse to pressure Larian into giving up on their shitty chain/unchain system.



P.S. On a marginally related note: just yesterday I was watching a Youtube video of Felicia Day, the actress, playing BG3 on Twitch.
One of the first things she complained about (even if admittedly just briefly as a passing comment) was how annoying the auto-following companions were.
The second moment she loudly voiced her disappointment was when she met Lae'zel and learned that she could have only three companions with her.

And believe me, watching her play should prove beyond any doubt that she's as "casual audience" as you can get, so can we please drop the bullshit about how "only hardcore out-of-touch forum grognards" want some of these improvements?

A/B testing is certainly an effective tool, but for BG3 I think it is probably best employed as a survey/questionnaire; preferably offered from withn the EA game to obtain the widest set of opinions.

If, as you seem to suggest, they actually have to implement multiple options for multiple mechanics ( and possibly "balance" the game encounters for every combination of options ), that may not be an effective use of development time.

I’m 100% they don’t know how sample size works in a market research. Nevertheless, I’ve already dropped of with the forum because I’ve seen how Larian is taking their player base feedback and it’s definitely not looking good

My opinion: I’m not really against the current party size. Sounds okayish. Wish that was the only problem

@Black_Elk, very sorry to hear your lovely hound ( looks like a greyhound type? ) is so unwell; I'm sure it must have been very stessful for you, as you obviously care for her greatly.

Pets don't really understand these situations, but are incredibly adaptable, and just get on with life. We have a dog near us that has no rear legs, but has a custom made harness with a set of wheels instead. It loves going out and still pulls on the lead!

I hope you caught the cancer before it became metastatic, so that you enjoy many more years together.

Thanks CJMPinger! Thanks etonbears!

Indeed, she is an ex-racer rescue greyhound. Fortunately we were lucky to catch it early, so her prognosis is good all things considered. She is still rocking the satellite cone and fashionable T shirts to protect her amputation incision, but happily on the mend now! If anything it goes to show that dogs are crazy resiliant! Its like they have 4 legs but only need 3 somehow, as if the 4th was a spare. Which is wild!

But perhaps the same general principle applies here as well? Maybe the party only needs 4 characters to function, but I'd rather have a spare with a 5th or 6th slot.

Since the logical appeals have been thoroughly exhausted in this thread with like 1000+ posts, now is the time for appeals to the emotions. Like just pure pathos at this point lol. All the feels!

Do it for the dog! Hehe
You know what Scratch would say!!! Can't go wrong with a larger pack

DOGGO! <3 What a gorgeous face. Glad to see the operation went well and the pup is getting around splendidly! They do adapt very quickly, don't they, and accept life as it is.

Maybe we all should start posting cute puppy faces in order to appeal to Larian? I like this plan. If nothing else, it gets us doggos.

Dividing XP amoung the active party is certainly the obvious solution. And since it has been the norm in tabletop DnD since the beginning, it is also the canon solution.

It does have some problems in a fixed-duration videogame format related to how any non-participating companions level, but those problems are minor.

I don't particularly understand arbitrary size limits on parties in RPGs to be honest. The computational load is clearly not an issue any more ( it probably was at one time ), so it seems to me to be more appropriate to have party size governed by the player's ability to bind followers and keep them happy; with you and with each other ( as in BG1/2 ).

I suppose it might have some unwanted effect in MP, but I find it difficult to imagine what that might be; you would just have more players levelling more slowly.

It's never a computational issue, as much as an attempt from the developer to keep the experience "focused" and have full control of what the UI will need to manage without things getting too messy.
Still, we aren't exactly begging to turn this into a RTS where you manage entire legions, just to be a little less restrictive with the default or even just to offer an option.

The UI is also already more or less suited for it, bar a couple of possible tweaks that would help and that frankly would be direly needed even if the limit remains four party members.

...Or some players controlling an extra character as a follower (which is even simpler to manage).
Not to mention that they could still, you know, play just with four if they really want to. Just because we want the option to have more NPCs in party for the single player it doesn't mean anyone has to do it.
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker are games where the default party is six members and yet they have an active portion of the user base extremely dedicated to coming up with builds and strategies to complete "solo playthroughs".
Nothing would prevent the same thing from happening here.

Awww thanks Alexandrite!

Not trying to sidestep the ongoing convo, which remains insightful as ever. But honestly the rational appeals have gotten us nowhere in the past year.

What is needed now is a novel face-saving excuse for them to include a 6 character Party option after having already stated that they believe 4 is best.

So why should they cave now and do an option for 6 instead of just leaving it to mods?

Well, because now someone is making a Blue Fairy wish!

I mean just look at those eyes Swen!
Come on dude!!!





Ps. Obviously I'd like the room to bring Scratch along for the ride too at some point lol. This isn't exactly setting some crazy high bar for a request is it? But I do think it would signal some deference to EA player feedback, since its been a seemingly popular and relatively non-controversial request from the getgo. It would be way better and a lot more entertaining to trial a larger party of 6 while the game is still in EA, and this would certainly drum up at least some enthusiasm. Also it would be a thing to distinguish BG3 from Divinty, and also from Solasta (which went with a party of 4) and make it more like Baldur's Gate 1&2 which had a party of 6.

Forget the balancing act right now. Or take it from the 3 legged dog, that we can surely figure out a proper balance later lol

But lets get something fun going for EA Summer! A big party!!!

A party of 6!!!!!!

Hmm, on one hand I don't want to ever lead scratch into danger. On the other, making him a ranger companion (ideally Tasha's Ranger Beast companion variant so he gets elemental) where he overrides your normal companion could be very very cool and would give him a sort of longevity.
I kinda want something similar with Shovel, where a wizard or warlock can make him a familiar loosely following the irregular familiar rules from (I forget which book). And now instead of summoning the normal familiars, you have to bring him out. There is a cost to doing this but now a Wizard can have a cute little murderous foul mouthed demon as their familiar, with all the benefits he would provide (and drawbacks).

+1! +1! +1! +1! +1! +1! +1! +1! +1! +1!

My thoughts on the matter as well.

Come release and full modding tools I'll be modding the hell outta this game. Not going to start till then though.

Agreed... I'm interested in mods too, but not until the game is stable at full release. I'd hate to break anything right now.