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

It's not that simple. Larian would also need to balance encounters around a 6 character party. It would also make balancing Larian's new Lone Wolf-style homebrew for BG3 a disgusting nightmare. Combat will either become more sloggish (especially if Larian implement reactions in a proper way) or too easy, there will be more inventory management (and for many players that is not fun, for example I find equipment managment for anyone but my main character boring and tedious), the gameplay will shift from an RPG to a tactical strategy like X-COM. There is a reason why so many modern RPGs shifted to a 3-4 person party, it is a perfect compromise for different kind of players.


Some people prefer 1-2 person party, but can deal with a 4-party as a compromise and understand the need for such compromise.


Being limited in content by who you can group with is akin to being limited in content by making choices in quests that exclude you from other quests. Like doing Thieve's Guild path to get to the Asylum in BG2 excludes you from doing Vampire path to get to said Asylum. There's nothing wrong with that. Wanting more while ignoring deliberating consequences for other players is just selfish and greedy.

Ok, I get it, you dislike having to manage more than one character. And perhaps so do some others. That's fair. Some are too lazy to even play a video game. It's just like how I myself am too lazy to even get up from the desk to go grab breakfast or lunch from the refrigerator 30 feet away to keep myself fed and alive (I don't even have to cook) and tend to end up having only one meal throughout the whole day. I get that. What I don't get is why you're trying so hard to argue against others who ask for something you dislike. Afraid that if too many people ask for it the developers will give them what they want and you will have to suffer? I get that too; I feel the same, tbh. But in the end, trying to argue against others claiming that what they want is "not good for the game" (when what you really mean is that it's not good for you) solves nothing. It's a fight no one will ever win. Especially when it's a fight that has been fought by others numerous times before.

And with “What about the poor devs who would have to rebalance” (a game that in the current state was never final to begin with and with most encounters still in a tuning phase) we have just hit the bingo card of the recurring arguments.

Because apparently Larian can implement fifteen difficulty settings in each one of their games, including one for vegetables who expect just to breathe as the game solves itself, but asking to support a larger party in lines with the standard of the saga is peak entitlement.

after playing the game yesterday I actually agree with that. I don't think it is deal-breaking not to have it, but I think what you are saying here is the ideal way to play.

I talked about it at length before, but as far as I see it, there are two ways to increase replay value, aside from the obvious of "make a good memorable experience and people will replay it even if it's completely linear". one way is to branch the story - you write two different scenarios based on the player choice. this is the example you gave. the other way is to create something (be it by story or gameplay) that forces the player to not have access to content. A good example is what Larian did with companions in DOS2. they just randomly killed off the ones you didn't choose. has nothing to do with the characters themselves, just arbitrarily killing the characters that are not in your party even though all of you are exactly at the same place. good job.

all WRPGs use both methods here and there, but there is no doubt which is superior and which is a lame unimaginative attempt to force you to replay the game.

Honestly, would they even need to rebalance act1a at all? It'd make the act a bit easier sure, but this act is the introduction and therefore the difficulty increase would be more gradual I'd imagine. Act 2 and 3 would possibly need rebalancing but those acts would be expected to be harder so difficulty increases would work.

And like I imagine the game wouldn't be much harder with four party members instead of six. Since the difficulty range would likely be intended for 3 to 6 characters. Especially if they stay closer to base 5e in monster structure with their homebrewing in line with base 5e difficulty.

In few words: not really. But this is ANOTHER thing that was already discussed ad nauseam in this very thread (well, in several separate threads that were merged in this Frankenstein-one, at least).

For a start, ironically enough many of the fights feel FASTER and smoother played with more characters in your party. You have more roles at your disposal, you can afford to evaluate more tactical options (i.e. giving up on inflicting direct damage is more a viable strategy when you are not responsible for at least 25% of your party output), you get rid of enemies quicker and moving more "pawns" on the board has the side effect of making you spend less time just watching the AI mobs (that usually outnumber you considerably) doing their things.

On top of that, the mere goal to achieve some universally accepted "balance" in this type of game is utopic in itself. ANY degree of intimate knowledge of the system will always translate in a massive boost in efficiency. That's why some of us are just curb-stomping most of the encounters no matter which setup we are sporting, while there are people weeping that they need the "story mode" difficulty option because even the tutorial fights are wiping the floor with their asses.

As I already pointed all the Infinity Engine games were created with a party of six in mind and yet plenty of players played them with a smaller party that simply increased in level faster and few were even crazy enough to experiment their most overpowered builds in SOLO mode (at the maximum difficulty, too). Seems like everyone got what they wanted there. The beauty of implicit scalability.
There will never be a "perfect balance" that will satisfy everyone. As long as they can test for the extremes (i.e. be sure that the hardest difficulty mode in the game is still reasonably doable) every other compromise below that is peachy and dandy.

I, for one, am not even particularly interested in the challenge just for the sake of it. I just want fun and engaging fights, but I have no intention to play at anything else than "core rules" mode, like D&D is supposed to be played.
Any increase in difficulty that could come from "buffing damage and HP for the enemies" is garbage as far as I'm concerned and I would not play that. And the same goes (in the opposite direction) for some condescending "story mode".
Even in Pathfinder (both of them) any other option than "core rules" doesn't even exist for me.

But even conceding that some work would need to be done to hit a sweeter spot, here's the main points:
1) none of the current encounters should be considered "FINAL" to any degree. Every single fight so far is a work in progress, so worrying about the potential need to tweak them is either disingenuous or silly.
2) D&D is a system that ALREADY includes suggestion on how to tweak/scale the CR of most encounters according to party size and level.
3) as consequence of the previous point, altering the difficulty of battles wouldn't really require the inane amount of work implied. In fact, given development tools mature enough and given the systemic nature of the AI in the game, it would be for the most part absolutely trivial. Literally a matter of dropping a couple more enemies (or raising in level/swapping some of the existing ones, or adding some extra environmental factor) with few clicks, without even any particular scripting involved. If anything it would be more work to TEST for them than to include these changes. But then again, if the additions/changes are gradual and reasonable extensive parallel testing would be superfluous too. It goes without saying that if a party of 4 can manage six brigands a party of 6 could manage to face eight. Or to have a stronger leader in charge of them. And it doesn't matter if the two variations wouldn't match each other 1:1 in terms of perfect fine tuning.

Exactly this.

+1

Vanilla BG2 also did this kind of balancing in one instance, in the beginning fight of ToB where the number of enemies showing up depends on the MC's level and party strength. I don't get why it has to be much more complicated than that. I have modded and balanced my own game in the past; I didn't find it that big of a deal, trying to tweak a fight for decent balance based on number of party members (or overall party strength). The AI was all there; all I needed to do was adding one or two bad guys, tweaking their levels, adding/removing a couple of abilities, positioning them, then playing test a couple times. Done. I actually found it really fun. Doing this for every single encounter in the game may take some time but I don't think it's that bad. If adding one or two bad guys and tweaking their stats a little bit would break the entire encounter then we have a bigger problem here...

And this is exactly why options are a good thing, and the more options there are the better for everyone.

I LOVE inventory/equipment management. Love it, love it, love it. It is a HUGE part of the fun of playing an RPG for me, and part of (alongside exponentially more party interactions) why I love party-based RPGs over solo-play RPGs. I kid you not, a good 25% of the time I spend playing these games is spent on messing around with the equipment of my party, trying different combos of equipment on different party members to attain an 'optimal' sweetspot of equipment distribution.

Yup, I also agree with everyone who's saying the whole "rebalancing" argument is B.S. At the very least Larian can just "balance" the game for a party of 4, even while providing the option of increasing (or decreasing) party size, and nobody would have a problem with that.

Well, yes ... but if you shall make Sorcerer face of your group, AND substitue Wizard ... you loose that person, with high Intellect, that could be usefull to related rolls ...

That is the point why i listed stats, instead of classes.
And note that i never said, that game is unplayable, nor unenjoyable unless you have absolutely optimal party ... i only claim, that to get "purrfect" results, you simply need more than 4 characters.
Otherwise, you have two choices ... and i would like to say that those choices are perfectly valid, and can totally offer good experience.
- Either start creating hybrids, that would be "kinda good" in two things, but never "specialized" in that one ...
- Or make your peace with the fact, that in some situations, you will have noone to use.

Of course, there is that ugly little tiny detail, that Larian specificly promised us that we WILL be able to venturing in this story ... and most DnD parties i know is actualy 5 or 6 players. :-/ So that is another +1 ...

And finaly ...
Personaly i believe that most of us, maybe even everyone ... would be completely fine, if this option would be enabled by some kind of mod that can se used by "Download > unzip to file > play" ... instead of Downloading some hack shit and alterning your own saves. -_-
And since we just were told that there IS actualy way of doing it in prologue ... it indeed isnt easy to find any valid reason for this restriction. :-/

I've posted this probably 3 times so far in this megathread, but exp has yet to be mentioned in the current iteration of this discussion.

There is no need to rebalance encounters for different party sizes. A simple fix is to just divide total exp between all the characters in the party. 5- and 6-person parties level up more slowly than 4-person parties, and <4-person parties level up faster. Boom! The game now auto-balances itself and Larian only has to care about balancing for a 4-person party.

If Larian wants to get a bit more complicated, they could slightly adjust the formula for granting exp to different party sizes. E.g., character exp = total exp/(party size+1) or = total exp/(party size)^0.5. But this is a MUCH simpler fix than adjusting every single encounter.

As for companions you don't bring with you (assuming they're not all unceremoniously killed at the end of Act 1), use the DAO solution of auto-leveling them to you main character's level minus 1.

These all sound like issues related to other issues and not specifically to party size. Inventory Management, for example, is a pain now and needs to be addressed and fixed. I get that you think managing inventory at this point is a pain and would be worse with 6 party members. That is true. It would be, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't do a 6 member party game. They should fix the Inventory Management so that it's easier. Then having a party of 6 wouldn't be a pain point. For example, Multi-Select would make Inventory Management a thousand times easier. If I hold the shift key and select items, they are all grouped into one and I can easily send all selected to Gale or Wyll or To Camp, that would make it just as easy to manage inventory between 4 or 6 or even more. The issue right now is that Inventory Management is clunky and you have to practically drag and drop every single item one at a time from one person to another, and hope it doesn't lag. That's not a party size issue, though. That's just one example. There are many other things they could do to speed up Inventory Management.

As for balance, again, that's a whole separate issue. You can't base party size on game balance for a game like this because you'll ALWAYS have issues. Being an open world game, roughly, there is too much of an opportunity for a Level 2 or 3 character to run to the Githyanki encounter early on. This is incredibly unbalanced as the Githyanki are WAY too tough for Level 2 or 3 characters. And yet, the game urges you to do just that; rush to the Gith before Lae'zel dies from nagging you to death. I don't care if you have a 4 or 6 party size, that Gith fight will kill players at Levels 2 or 3.

So balance in a game like this needs to be based on several factors, and Larian may need to do something to fix this aside from the size of the party. For example, they could build some logic into the game for encounters. If you take on the Githyanki Patrol and are only Level 2, the Githyanki Patrol is weakened, HP is severely reduced to half or even a quarter of their normal so that a few hits kill them. Maybe they're also suffering from some sort of poison or other debuff to weaken them as well. Sort of like a Level Sync function in other games like Final Fantasy 14 where if you are Level 50 and you enter a Level 5 Fate you get level synced to Level 5 so you don't just severely overpower the entire encounter. In a game like this, to balance it appropriately, they should certainly do something to level sync encounters or debuff enemies based on the player's or players' stats etc. at the time the encounter is triggered.

This being said, if they did something like this, then a Party Size of 6 or 8 or whatever wouldn't harm balance. If I showed up at the Githyanki Patrol with 6 Level 4 party members, the game would recognize that I have a Full Party and throw the Gith at me with full stats and buffs. They came fresh to the battlefield as opposed to arriving just after maybe a fight with the Flaming Fist or something. There are so many ways a DM can handle balancing a normally tough encounter, but reducing HP or inhibiting enemies with debuffs of some kind is one of the most basic ways to do this, and it wouldn't be THAT hard for Larian to implement.

Basic balancing logic: Party arrives and D&D Challenge Rating is Medium or lower, enemies have full stats. D&D Challenge Rating is Challenging, reduce enemy HP by 25% and maybe a -2 debuff to attack and defense (or something like this). D&D Challenge Rating is Deadly, reduce enemy HP by 50% and maybe a -4 debuff to attack and defense (again, or something like this. Just throwing rough numbers out. The concept is what I'm driving at here, not the exact details). In this way, whether you have 4 or 6 or 8 party members, use the D&D basic Challenge Rating system as a basis for your encounters and tweak them in some way to provide the players with a fun and rewarding fight each time without overwhelming them with ridiculously tough enemies just because they wandered onto the scene earlier than they should have. That is no fun.

But again, that is a balance issue, not a Party Size issue. The game is imbalanced because there are too many potential imbalancing variables at play, not because of Party Size. Party Size is only one variable at play, and setting it at 4 doesn't fix the imbalance. It only makes it worse. Set it at 6 or 8 or 4 or 2 or whatever, but you'll still have imbalance because you can be at Level 5 (once EA is done) and face the goblins in the Druid's Grove Tunnels and wipe the floor with them easily because 4 Level 5 characters could easily wipe them out. Or, on the flip side, you can have a Level 2 character go straight to the Gith Patrol and be wiped out easily whether you have 4 or 6 or 8 because they are just that tough.

So, the only answer to imbalance is that they have to set up logic in the game to tweak stats to match your Party Size and Level and even potentially your equipment. If they really want to balance the game, they have to stop trying to fix it with homebrews and restrictions to things like party size and they need to focus on a different approach.

Another example to fix imbalance would be: Party has 6 members, all Level 3, they enter the secret tunnels in the druid's grove, game generates 8 goblins instead of 4. All normal stats and weapons, etc., but the game generates more enemies as opposed to just the regular ones in the game currently. So, instead of debuffs and HP reduction, the game could be built to recognize a certain challenge rating and say, "That's too easy of a fight. I need to generate a few more goblins to make the challenge more difficult." Or vice versa. Instead of 4 gobbos, because I came there right away and am alone, there is only 2 gobbos.

Either increase enemy numbers or buffs or HP or decrease these things. That is the way to handle imbalance, and the game needs to be smart enough to do this or the imbalance will always be there.

But again, that isn't strictly related to Party Size. That is a game imbalance issue that Party Size is only a part of.

I don't mind the redundancy of this thread, it just allows me to try and distill my feelings through repetition heheh.

The main reason I would like to see a full party of 6, is so that this game will feel more like Baldur's Gate, which was one of my all time favorite games! Not Jade Empire or NWN or Kotor or Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and not Divinity Original Sin or Divinity Original Sin 2. But Baldur's Gate. I think if they increased the default party size from 4 to 6, the game would instantly feel more like a proper Baldur's Gate sequel and settle the waters on that point. The gameplay would then be differentiated from their previous Divinity titles, and I think it would just be a nice nod to the BG lineage.

In the Gold Box games it was a party of 6-8, plus 2 additional NPCs
Baldur's Gate 1/2 was a party of 6 and up, since it also allowed for follower NPCs and various character summons at different points.

The games which came out later, and which went with a single AI Henchmen or a Party of 2, 3 or 4, just feel like they are coming from a different lineage to me. One that maybe still starts with old bioware dungeons and dragons style RPGS, but just not the one that I'm into, which is Baldur's Gate hehe. I mean that's why I'm here, that's what I signed up for.

It just seems like a very simple way, using systems already in place, to capture more of the spirit of Baldur's Gate. So that's my main reasoning, I have others, but that's the most important. Its to capture a "feel" more than anything else, one that BG3 is currently lacking for me. I hope they consider it, and build in proper support for 6, rather than just leaving all this to the modding community.


ps. I also fully agree with everything laid out directly above by GM4him. Not only would that be a better way to handle encounters, it would in my view heighten the replay considerably, since seeing how the game responds to different parties with different makeups or with different numbers, would then be another point of interest or potential surprise. It is perhaps not as interesting as an even more randomized system of encounters might be, but at least it wouldn't be static. Right now, if I've played the game before, I already know where the imps and flayers and gobos and such are going to be, what they carry, what they can do. Nothing changes from one play through to the next. Whereas if the encounters were scaling in some way, at least there would be a little mystery to it.

So its sentimentality then? I would invite you to consider that sentimentality is not a good reason to do...well....anything really. And hey its a video game - no big deal - its not like you are making a major life choice based on sentimental reasons.

Still - I recall some guy spouting off that if "BG3 didn't have the Naskell Mines then it wasn't BG3". In fact, most of the major early negative reactions to bg3 - amusingly made fun of in this video by Mr. Narbs - was based on this sort of sentimental knee-jerk reaction to the announcement of the game not being made by Bioware or that it was not using the infinity engine.

This is what happens when you elevate "emotional idealism" as being a virtue. It used to be we had a society that - properly - looked down on excess sentimentality as being a negative character trait. I'm old.

And listen, you will likely get your 6 person party - someone will mod it in. I doubt Larian will do it, as they have balanced the game for 4 people plus random allies and I don't see them moving on this one. To go back at this point will add excess development time as they would need to rebalance. Also they are a forward thinking bunch - there is a reason they get a lot of credit for moving the genre forward by leaps and bounds - and to do that you need to let go of the past.

However, I would invite you to explore this 'sentimental-thinking' and make sure you are not using it excessively in your decision making. It can be very destructive.

This is laughable. Nobody gives them any such credit, and justifiably so, other than some sycophants in the gaming news media.

To what august body would you defer your opinion to as having the personhood and existing to have the authority to confer accolades on another? Please list with references.

"Justifiably so"- please expound on this with examples. I noted you did not say "in my opinion" which means you have some empirical evidence behind your assertions.

I am genuinely getting tired of the response to every core problem people bring up being "A mod will fix it." Mods are no replacement for a good core game. If people have a problem with something, it at least warrants testing, not dismissing with "Mods will fix it." If we applied that to every hot button issue, this game would just ship out on the proper release day incomplete and a garbage fire.

Instead of dismissing things with mods, at least allow us to test how things feel with different amounts. The game is in development, the balance can easily be adjusted. Hell, systems could be made to make a smooth balance no matter what.

Sorry, its just that statement I have seen crop up one too many times and it has irked me every single time. It is not an attack against you, just mods are not the solution and I am tired of it being treated as this catchall for every problem someone brings up, whether I agree with their issue or not.

Haha I'll politely decline the invititation, since I reject this pejorative assessment of the value of sentiment, both on general philosophical grounds, and specifically regarding computer game sequels. Especially one that is so clearly trying to capitalize on nostalgia as its whole point for existing. I'd rather be tender about it I guess, but that's not because I'm incapable of analytical thought. Thanks anyway, though

Best Elk

To the whole nostalgia thing. BG3 exists because people have nostalgia for BG1 and 2, as well as there being many people, such as myself, finding the games very enjoyable in the modern age. Generally, when you make a sequel in a series, you want it to feel somewhat like the previous game, feel like a part of the series. And currently BG3 doesn't have that yet because of many reasons. The first being that 5e is fundamentally different from 2e. The second being that larian has a much different feel than age old bioware or even beamdog. The story as of yet doesn't feel connected enough but we have been assured that it will eventually. And the last reason is a ton of small tonal differences that add up. The party size is one of those differences, and while small is also significant enough to warrant 23 pages of discussion. Ultimately, moving to 6 would in fact allow BG3 to feel more as a part of the series. And would allow it to stand out amongst many 3d story driven RPGS, as Bioware's Dragon Age has only party sizes of 4, and DOS2 only had a party size of 4. In fact, a party size of four or smaller is a product of limitations after going into 3d, because games and I genuinely believe we have moved past those limitations. Dragon Age Origins would genuinely run worse if you had more companions, to the point where that final battle is very glitchy in my experience. Similar for ME if you mod it in, KOTOR as well if you increase the size (at least in experience). So ultimately the conclusion of my rambling is that a party size of four is in fact a relic of limitations that we have clearly moved past, and that we can easily achieve the numbers the 2d games had, and that something being old or nostalgic doesn't devalue it in any way.