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

Honestly, I am genuinely unhappy with that in DOS2 cause there really isn't any reason why those two other people (or three if you start as a custom) wouldn't have joined you. Even with the godwoken thing, every seemed content to join you and the goal in act 1 was survival and escape.

As I said "But even there the situation could be improved in the 1st Act itself."
And that could be achieved quite easily by adding some inner rules for the Fort Joy, like "prisoners are not allowed to gather in groups more than 4" + more guards with a script that would make them intervene, if we would spend too much time around a fifth person with all our characters. After the Fort the Seekers could ask for some help with numbers. And then companions could die while helping the Seekers, not during the Malady spell.

Lol. I'm not happy about 4, but think about it. How many RPGs truly have a 6 member party? The Final Fantasy games? Neverwinter games? Solasta? Knights of the Old Republic? I mean, other than BG1 and 2 and Icewindale, what other 6 party RPGs are there?

So yeah, Id like 6, but Im okay with 4 if there is a decent reason for it and especially of they explain it well in the story.

But the point of this new thread which has now been merged wasn't to argue about 4 or 6. It was new mechanics for camp that might explain 4 party members better and provide more meaning for those left at camp and food and so forth. So it's frustrating that this has now become a continuation of the same old convos everyone has been having for months. Im not arguing party size here. Im offering nee suggestions for camp and party management and a story reason for party size.

I suggest you to write one of the modders or Vometia directly.

Baldur's gate? Baldur's gate 2? Planescape Torment? Icewind Dale? Icewind Dale 2? Several Might & Magic or Wizardy Games? Temple of Elemental Evil (up to 8 with enough charisma, actually)? Fallout 2 with 10 Charisma? Pillars of Eternity (and the sequel got a lot of backlash for capping at 5)? Pathfinder Kingmkaer? Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous? Solasta makes you create 4 characters but it gives you OFTEN chances to fill the other two slots with temporary NPCs?

I could go on but I think you got the point.

Just because other, lesser game on the downward path of absolute DECLINE decided that as a console player you were too stupid to manage six it doesn't mean its should be embraced as a standard in a PC game.

Not to mention, consoles can easily handle the controlling of more than 4 characters. You can see that with the console ports of things like Icewind Dale, which does not control perfect but absolutely is not being hurt by a party of 6 at all. Console Limitations don't really apply to cRPGs.

Hey. Like I said, Im all for 6 or even more. My suggestion would actually be more fun if they allowed you to have unlimited party members and let you decide on how many you want to leave at camp to manage mundane things.

Again, my point wasn't 4 or 6 party members. My point was to provide some flavor to camp and give reasons why you might actually want to limit party size.

So if I have 6 party members, but in order to ensure I have food and drink and weapon repair for the day I need to leave 2 at camp, viola! 4 in party adventuring and 2 at camp. If I don't want any at camp and plan on just switching out damaged items and finding food on the go, I could just take 6 with me and skip leaving anyone at camp.

That, I think, would make it more fun and make more sense. Im not trying to give Larian an excuse to keep it at 4 party members.

Eyes rolling.

Compared to every RPG ever made with 3-4 party members, this is truly a small number. SO many Crpgs have 4 or less party members. That was my point and why it doesn't bother me. Would I like 6 or more? Absolutely, but having 4 is not uncommon.

Why don't you compare it to other RPGs of THE SAME TYPE if you want to have a pertinent limitation, then?
How is the number of party members in something like Final Fantasy or KOTOR even relevant at all? What's next? Persona? Gothic and Risen, where you play with action controls and third person camera in solo?

Let me just be clear here. I WOULD LOVE 6 OR MORE PARTY MEMBERS.

That said, let me also be clear on another point. I WAS ONLY SAYING I DIDN'T THINK 4 WAS A BIG DEAL. I. Me personally, don't think its a big deal because LOTS of RPGs have 4 or even less party members. LOTS of them.

Is it a big deal to you? Obviously. To me? No. Why? Lots of games have 4.

Would I like 6? YES. 100%.

But 4 is also fine with me. The ENTIRE point of my post, however, was that regardless of how many they go with, I just thought a reason as to why, a LEGIT reason, would be nice. If, for nothing else, it'd be nice for immersion.

Bah! Why am I bothering? All we ever do is argue about the same stupid crap all the time out here. Sorry I made a suggestion.

It's sad that this thread has been merged with this one because some people deviated from OP's point/suggestion.

Really, it wasn't about the party size... And what hasn't deviated was interresting to read.

Yeah, my own suggestion could have been done regardless of what the party size limit was.

A lot about how the camp works is done through implications rather than anything actually shown to us. Giving little side scenarios to show what everyone left behind is doing at/around camp (along with how new arrivals are showing up) could do a lot to throw out that suspension of disbelief.

I wholeheartedly agree with this point. Far too often the moderators are way too trigger-happy about merging any new threads that even extremely tangentially reference certain topics (like party size for example). They claim it is about grouping it all in one place, but I see it as banishing certain discussions to a purgatory-like location because even the tiniest of references to those certain topics is something they don't like.

Console == 4 pads == 4 characters I guess. Or 4 buttons on the cross if you play solo.

Make it work differently for the PC version? Aaaaah....now you talking money.

Would love Larian to make it 6 characters and balance the game properly for hard mode with 6 characters. Ngl. But well, if they don't then they don't. The amount of characters kinda limits possibilities but in the current build 6 characters would be straight OP so there's that.

Some people have pointed out that when they mod in 6 character party, the game actually feels more balanced and satisfying.
Also I seriously doubt the limitation is because of D-Pad, typically a game like this uses a more cycling form of selection on consoles, or uses a pop up menu. And legitimately, a console can handle six characters at once easily. Icewind Dale controls fine and so does Wasteland 2 and 3. DOS2 I'd practically have 8 characters at all times cause I love Summoning, and the turn based game could handle it easily and fairly intuitively (minus the weird chain/unchain shenanigans outside of combat to many thats an issue with any amount of characters past 1).

I don't play console so good to have the insight of someone who does ^^ I only have a pad for DMC5 ;P Used to play back when the first XBOX( the green one) was a thing.

For the balance thing -> It's so personal it's hard to discuss in simple words I guess. I went with Cleric, thief, mage x2. (Cleric + Mage custom PC playe with a friend ) and to be honest we were dying quite often (not wiping, but mages would die + sometimes the thief) mostly cause we had a rule of max 1 defence ability and one offensive spell per encounter. Without it the cleric can just wipe out most of the encounters by himself, shoot anyone at long distance with the bow (cause obviously cleric full dex) etc.

The bridge encounter with the boys with the dragon was quite hardcore - ish, ngl. One of the few encounters that actually were hard. The hag too was quite challenging but mostly due to bugs( One of the mages got desyncedd when being hit by a spell an couldn't use any ability....). So we started the hag encounter with 3 guys and finished it.

But yeah basically I woul expect every encounter to be at the difficulty level of those guys from the bridge actually forcing you to use your combos and abilities to full extent instead of being like " You fool, I used 10% of my power".

Bottom line; When this game gets to full release I will either find a way to make a party of 6-8 custom characters (none of the stock NPCs for me, thank you)... or I will break the game trying. Either way, is fine... I will not play it any other way.

In a game with four core roles, I really hate that you can only have a party of four. It's so restrictive. While you're not technically forced to bring a warrior, a priest, a wizard and a rogue, D&D is obviously designed from the bottom with the intention that a party has all four roles covered. A party size of 6 means you have much more freedom to make a playthrough feel unique without doing an actual "no mages" novelty run or whatever. In BG3, unless I do special multi-role builds (which, with an apparently low level cap, sounds questionable), I can't have a playthrough with more than one of any core archetype without sacrificing another. I absolutely hate that. It has been awful in the EA so far, and I can't see it getting much better in the full game.

Well, welcome to the club.

We had dozens of multi-paged threads (currently merged in a Frankenstein-megathread in the appropriately named section) where many of us complained for months that this limitation to four character per party sucks in a CRPG of this kind.