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

Every D&D game so far that allowed for a party ranged from 1 to 6 characters, starting precisely with the two previous Baldur's Gate games, had to face the same exact "problem" of being capped with the exp/level at some point and it was never a particularly limiting factor.
Not even for playing SOLO, let alone for having an oscillation of one or two party members. Some players enjoyed the added challenge and weren't particularly troubled by it, others went for the bigger party because liked to manage more characters.

It's a fake problem you are advocating for just for the sake of being petulant about an "issue" that wouldn't even affect you to any degree.


Also, the very assumption that turn-based combat would make HARDER to manage more characters is a load of bullshit, especially when it's most likely the opposite. Josh Sawyer himself went on record saying that if POE II was designed to be turn-based from the get go he probably wouldn't have lowered the party size to 5 and mentioned as an example Battle Brothers being great with a default party of 12 characters.

What part of the point "If your encounter requires the AI to get dumber to work, then you probably have to redesign the encounter itself" did you miss?

I really don't get these kinds of arguments. You guys do realize we are living in an electronic age, right? It would be easy as pie technologically to allow, as an OPTION, an increase in party size up to six when in single-player, and to restrict party size to four for co-op play. No "rebalancing" of anything will be needed, because, to repeat again, this would be an OPTION. Any player exercising this OPTION would be accepting that encounter "balance," whatever that means, will be upset by increasing the party size, and it will be up to them to decide, for their game and their enjoyment, whether this is acceptable to them. There is nothing technologically difficult about doing this at all.

Encounters don't have to be rebalanced if you have properly shared XP. A party of 6 will be lower-level than a party of 4, and thus will have the same effective power. A party of one or two will be higher-level than a party of 4, and thus have the same effective power.

Larian would only need to tweak one thing: the exp equation. Which is ~trivial.

Or as kanisatha said, nothing could be changed and a party size of 6 could be explicitly labeled as an "optional and unbalanced" setting. Personally I would never use that option because the game would get too easy=boring, and I'd lose some respect for Larian for not even trying to balance this game mode. But as long as ^ requires a checkbox in settings to enact, I wouldn't be any less happy with the game. And modders could adjust exp gain.

I think party of 6 will likely be a thing they will do eventually. They've consistently left room between party and UI for more members, even making animal and familiar companions above party members instead of filling up the space.

Every DnD game like NWN1, NWN2 and Solasta? Some games had a party of 6, and those are extremely outdated and also not even TB like BG3.



You literally just confirmed my point. Playing with 4 people in a game designed for 6 will screw the balance for these people. Having a smaller party shouldn't be an added challenge, because many people just like smaller parties and don't want to suffer for that.


It will, because I want an enjoyable experience with balanced diffciluty for 4 and 2 person parties. I played BG1,2, Pathfinder, Pillars, and I know that having less than 6 people in your party skews the balance and makes the game not enjoyable.



First of all, not harder, but more frustrating considering. Then, Josh Sawyer never designed a successful TB title, I can't even remember a single TB game he actually made aside from unreleased Fallout Van Buren. And he isn't a god of rpgs anyway, his PoE series flopped in the end so hard there will be no PoE3 like the first two. Also Battle Brothers isn't even a DnD RPG, it's a strategy game rather than a DnD RPG like BG3, it has a different system. Like X-COM plays nicely with 6 person party because their system is different and tailored for that type of game. In BG3 larger combats (druid grove, duergar civil war) already are sloggish and boring with just 4 people.

Except that's not how it works with DnD system. Action economy, ability to maintain concentration spells, etc aren't determined by level. It will be either too easy or too hard for a smaller party, because of how DnD levels work.

Pardon the stupid question ...
But why is that a bad thing?

If you look at this outside regular easy/normal/hard options ...
And imagine difficiulty setting as they did it for Pathfinder ...

Party size could easily be part of that settings.

Because players shouldn't be penalized for playing with a smaller party if it's uncomfortable for them to manage many characters or if they don't have that many friends to play multiplayer. Also Pathfinder is an interesting case actually, considering that the game is extremely easy once you get to midgame even on higher difficulties. Summons make tanks irrelevent, mythic powers make elemental resistances and immunities irrelevent, fogs stack and can be spammed, etc. Smaller parties can easily beat pathfinder as long as you have a summoner and a blaster/controller with very basic min/maxing simply because of how the system works.

I honestly doubt that party size will affect amount of players able to join via multiplayer ...
That would require A LOT extra work to implement. :-/

I dont quite understand what penalisation for smaller party are you talking about ... that would aply for when game would be ballanced for 6 members, yet you would like to go with only 4 ... but our situation is other way around.

Game is prepared for 4 characters ... encounters are all created for 4 characters ... every game mechanic is "ballanced" (for lact of better term) around 4 characters ... so nothing really changes compared to what we do have now.

Yet, if allowed, you would be able (just able, no need to do that if you are not comfortable with such big party, game is still prepared for 4 characters) to take another 2 with you to make party of 6, instead of intended 4.
Yes, it would make your game easier (more carry weight, more spells, and spellslots per rest, more actions per round, etc. etc.) ... and that is exactly why i said, it might be seen as part of difficiulty settings.

I didnt play Pathfinder, so i cant really be judge of that ...
But i really love their difficiulty settings:
In matter of its not just "easy / normal / hard" ... but you are able to adjust thigns the way you like it ... in our case that would mean things like amount of resources needed for long rest (since many people here is still complaining that food does not limit Long Rests enough ... so they could double the needed amount of food, to limit themselves as they see fit), carry weight (since many people here is still complaining about the fact that you can carry more than single Barrel, if your character have enough Strength ... so they could halven their carry weight, to limit themselves as they see fit), and the other stuff.

Aside for the fact that I said "Every game that allowed...", sorry if I don't take as models some of the worst games ever made with the D&D license, only because by your warped metrics anything else is "outdated" (despise a lot of these games being actually more recent than the ones you mentioned).
I'll taka a new Temple of Elemental Evil over the pile of trash that both the NWN 1 SP and NWN2 were.


Your point doesn't even stand on its own legs, given that it's not even written on stone that 4 players should play with just 4 characters, for one, or that the game should be particularly tuned to set the challenge for six, to begin with.

I'm sorry, but who cares of what YOU want? The point is that one approach suggested here allows to satisfy multiple demographics while yours wouldn't.



I never even said half of the things you are allegedly objecting to (never called Sawyer a god of RPG design, but if nothing else he understands his systems) and the rest isn't really relevant (Battle Brothers not being D&D is irrelevant. The game still allows for a complexity of character options in combat at least comparable to D&D 5th Ed.


This entire thing is literally a load of "making poor nonsensical excuses to rabidly defend the status quo, no matter what".
I'd be ready to bet you wouldn't even care if Larian suddenly declared that six characters as mandatory for everyone would be the new standard. Maybe even praise them for it, just because "it's their vision" or something.
You are just unhealthily invested on defending whatever decision they already made.

???
Then just adjust the exp gain until it works. If directly splitting exp between 6 players still results in their party being stronger than a party of 4, then give the party of a 6 a <1 multiplier to their exp.

Unless you're saying it's literally impossible for a party of 4 to be as powerful as a differently leveled party of 6...?

To long didn't read: Just make amount of characters in party up to 6 -ish. Make it an option. Best solution based on your discussion above after me. The "perfect" balance doesn't need to exist. It didn't exist in BG2 or DOS2 they both sold well.


Did read:

Since the party size discussion drifted into difficulty levels just want to point out one thing. You mentioned above on page #70 Pathfinder tends to get borderline easy from midgame. I played BG2 & 1 + TOB + Pillars of eternity. They all tend to have that characteristic in my opinion.



In case of BG2 especially since levels 12-14 are a major breaking point for some classes(mages especially) in 2nd edition DND. Especially with spell sequencers coming into play.
The game was easier for me with a party of 5/4 than a party of 6 because you would reach that braking point faster because of experience split. So experience split will normally act as a " balance" factor. You will take longer to reach the breaking point.
I still played with 6 in majority of my playthroughs for party interactions.


In PoE depending on the builds you make it's the same thing. Once you get all the spells you needed to make your " perfect party" well....it becomes perfect. It can face all challenges because you designed your party around it.




Is becoming OP an issue? I don't really think so. Heroic fantasy is pretty much about it isn't it. Knowing where their system would lead bioware mae BG2 a story about becoming a living god and most of those who played it liked it.
DOS 2 did the same and thank god cause you can two-tap the endgame boss with the proper party(viable only for those of us who make multiple playthroughs and learn in-depth mechanics. Most of the people playing a game don't do that, they don't even finish the game!!).

While party size impacts gameplay it doesn't mean the consequences it leads to are necessarily better or worse. It's just different. Let people play the way they like. Both aspects have their pros& cons and they are all listed in one of the 70 pages of discussion.

Look. Party of 6 just plain makes sense all the way around. Single player or multiplayer both.

Single. Create 1 PC and have all 5 origin characters in the party. Instead of XP share, where everyone gets 300 XP because the MC got 300, divide by 6 and everyone gets 50, leveling up slower because bigger party. Want to earn more XP, only take party of four. That's your choice.

Multiplayer. Can create up to four PCs and still have room for two other party members, so you can take someone like Lae'zel or Shadowheart in your party to trigger those story scenes that require them in your party to trigger. If you don't have six available slots for party members you can't take any of the origin characters with you if you play with three other people. Therefore, in order to make multiplayer work, you need to be able to have a party of six so you can have four players and two origin characters at a time.

This is a silly debate because the way the game is built 6 party members is the only way it works for all scenarios.

I wonder what would you do when they implement remaining Origin characters ...
As far as i know, Swen told us around 3/4 year ago, that there is no Good complanion YET.

Hope you dont plan lobbing for 13 member party, if there is one Origin character planned for each class.

This is nonsence ...

For one math dont add up ...
Having reward reduced by 75% for incerasing party size by half makes no sence.
You would need to count a little futher ... like (300*4)/6 ... so 200 if im not misstaken, that would seem much more fair.

For two, you need to think about character progresion in longer run ...
Sure, it would not matter for EA, since there is plenty XP for us to waste ...
But for full release? Presuming there will not be level cap wich plenty XP to waste for each Act? You might aswell end underleveled and coming to last boss with party of 10 instead of 13 ... and i kinda doubt that two other people capable of casting all those weaker spells can outweight the fact that you loose feat and lvl 7 spell. O_o

Also, to make this really fair ... Larian would have to think to other side aswell ...
Solo runner would need to get 1200xp instead of 300 ... and that last boss would stand against level 20 probably. Wich, as you hopefully agree is nonsence.

...What?
For one, dividing the exp reward among the number of available party members is precisely how exp is supposed to work in D&D, generally speaking.

That aside, precisely based on this principle solo runners would exp WAY faster than large parties (but of course the downside would be facing few uphill battles to get there, since they don't have support from others).
And D&D has never been about strict level requirements to begin with. It's more about approximate ranges, which is something it can afford thanks to the progression curve not being particularly steep (if not for some occasional ramp ups in power when certain milestones are reached).


Also, I'm not sure why we are talking about it in terms of "Can you imagine what a mess that would be? " when that's precisely how plenty of other games did it in the past (once again, including BG1 and BG2).
And yeah, of course once you get to the absolute, final level cap allowed by the game the solo player would potentially be at disadvantage over a full party of the same level... But that's precisely what solo players usually strive for: the additional challenge. Being able to say "I did it, despise the odds being stacked against me".

To save space I won't copy down quotes. When I mentioned the origin characters I was referring to the original five characters that are obviously the main characters of the game based on images and so forth and the fact that they are the first five origin characters of the game. So for maximum story contact, it would be good and user friendly to allow players the ability to travel with all five origin characters at one time so they don't have to constantly bounce around back and forth between camp with who they want to travel with just to be able to see all the story elements.

And I don't understand why you think the math doesn't work. If I fight a monster with one character and that monster is worth 300 experience, then if I fight it with two characters, I should earn 150 for each of my two characters because it was twice as easy to defeat that monster because I had two people to defeat it. Two characters should not earn 300 experience for fighting a monster that one person would get 300 experience for. The harder the fight is, the more experience you should get, so if one person defeats a monster that would normally take two people, that one person should gain all the experience of two people.

The point of using this system is that you can have any number of party members, and the game is balanced out. Why? Because if I play the game with six characters I will level up a lot slower with all six characters then if I play the game with only one character. So my party of eight maybe all at level two, but my party of one could be at something like level 6 just because that one character got all the experience that the party of eight divided amongst themselves. The problem with the way the system is built in bg3 is that everybody gets all the experience earned from every battle so they level up super fast regardless of party size.

So NWN1 EE has from 500k to 1m owners according to steamspy, the ratings on Steam is 88% with 4k reviews. Also NWN is always listed together with BG among the best DnD games. It is outdated today, but so is BG, and NWN was actually quite successful despite being so different compared to classic isometric rpgs, unlike PoE, which was successful only because of nostalgia (both PoE2 and Tyranny flopped so hard Obsidian stopped making old school isometric rpgs).


If some players play with 1 character and others with 2 it makes things clunky and unfair in a TB game. Also once again you ignore that many players only want to play with 1 character. Divinity OS was a breakthrough title for many RPG players because it allowed people who prefer controlling only one character to play a party based game and enjoy it. Lone Wolf mechanics and ability to play solo PC with friends who also play solo PCs in multiplayer was a major selling point for many players.


So your suggestion is to allow 6 person party and tune the challenge for 4? That makes no sense.


Except it the other way. You completely ignore people who prefer smaller parties and playing solo, you don't even try to understand them. Divinity OS was enjoyable for people who shun large party games, for many it was their first party-based RPG they could actually play and have fun, compared to games like PoE that are geared towards a very specific demographics that can't sustain big budget games. There is a reason why old school RPGs don't sell as much and tend to flop hard, despite all the love and effort developers put into them.


His systems are real-time and his best games are FPS/RPG hybrids. He understand them. He doesn't understand TB RPGs. Therefore his opinion on how to make a good TB game is largely irrelevent.


Please refrain from projecting here, I just state my opinion about what's more fun for me and people like me. I don't care about making another copy of Baldur Gates 2 that will fail to attract anyone but a small group of old school RPG fans, I want a game that will be at least as good a Divinity Original Sin 2 was. A small party was one of it's advantages and there is no real reason to change it.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Hardcore players do that. Actual solo players, people who like having 1 character they control and manage in RPGS don't play BG1,2 and similiar titles exactly because it is too challenging for an enjoyable experience. They play Skyrim, Witcher and many other RPGs and there are a lot of players like that. And guess what, these people bought and enjoyed Original Sin 2 because Lone Wolf allowed them to play the game the way they want without feeling handicapped.

I don't know how to cut it up so neatly by demographics or types of players, but ideally the game could scale and break to accommodate both though right? I mean for both those demographics it would be nice to see them covered in a game that introduces D&D to a broader audience. Simplest way to meet the need would seem to be XP scaling, since nothing there is set in stone for it in the rulebook, but we have some definite scaffolding to build off of. It's flexible, always at the game master's discretion, just with the general guidelines of challenge rating vs reward that's sensible whether in XP or Treasure. I don't think they should even play that set until they know how many encounters they intend or what the game will ultimately morph into. But its seems like very simple to make XP scaling an option.

I guarantee at least some would love to turn that on right now, even with a more limited party of 4. Don't make it the default I suppose if we're worried about scarring off a cash cow, or passing up on the chance to turn more people on to D&D. Just make it like the second "XP setting" option from a gameplay menu at launch of a new game?

Then they could also see how many of their players are playing with that toggle on/off, to get a clearer picture of how many people like it, or what they end up doing with it once it's there. Right now with the level cap low, and some people feeling like they hit too quick, it would be a nice feature and one that doesn't seem too hard to throw in the oven. Simple calcs of this sort are why we got the computers up an humming in the first place. I'd love to see them drop something like that on us, instead of just drop here and there, because it could change the whole feel from a setting. Since it was brought, I also wish that we could appeal to the Skyrim Witcher Audience with a gamemode that just offered a driving view and associated control scheme. It seems like the game is basically already set up for it, just absent a locked camera and some movement toggles. It would be super straightforward to accommodate that for a majority of the gameplay outside combat itself, and probably there too, if they just went even more oldschool like full POV within combat for that gamemode. Call it Solo or something in the Options with no XP scaling. They just need to make it read descriptive in the settings instead of judgmental like "difficulty options" typically do. They should move away from that idea maybe. You know, that the game settings are 'Story-Time, Easy, Normal, Hard, Ultra' whatever. That's not the best way to frame it. Should maybe read more like 'Lone Wolf 1, Co-Op 2-4, Large Group 4-6 or Solo with Party' then for that last either 'AI Follow' or 'Puppet Master' mode. With recommended game settings (and XP settings) for each, it might work. I wish they could thread the needle on something like that.

I can see how a game like this could accommodate a broad swath of different audiences. Just needs to dial the settings a little better, and come up with some controls and UI and Cam concepts to accommodate what people like. The visual assets seem to be fairly solid and in place, like they'd work well for any of those approaches. Basically a game that can play more like DA for Lone Wolf, like Divinity for Co Op, or like Classic, but all using the same systems and assets. More Raw less Raw or whatever, depending how one sets up the launch. I don't know, people always say don't try to be everything to everyone or you just fail spectacularly, but I'm not so sure. It'd be great to have a game that worked like that in different ways for different purposes or moods. I think they could maybe pull it off, but instead of 1 size fits all do it more tailor made? I really want 6, but I also would like to see that done well. Not just grafted on. There's still time, but they gotta start cooking something or at least preheat. I think it would be fun if I could play this game like might and magic III, just fully POV with a cam skipping around, that'd be fun with 6. Or like tactical battle style of Pools of Radiance where the game goes O and I have a heart attack lol. They could even make it have like some comic appeal that way when they list the view/mode settings. Using the same art assets but like banging out a few different ways to do the controls/ui/camera view? I wish hehe

You say Tuco is projecting in an earlier post, but you're doing a fair bit of projecting and gatekeeping here yourself. You're perfectly entitled to your playstyle, but don't put your preferences on others and pigeonhole them into boxes/restrictions they must follow in order to be an "actual solo player." (Tuco is also generalizing, but at least he prefaced it with "usually.")

You might have enjoyed DOS2 because you could play a solo character while still having an easier time, but that doesn't mean that other "solo players" liked the game for that reason. And you might have not played BG1&2 because they were too challenging, but I'm sure that there are many people who enjoyed both BG1&2 AND solo playthroughs of DOS2, as well as titles like Skyrim/Witcher and even other "harder" party crpgs like Pathfinder and PoE (me for example).

As BG3 currently is, there is no support for playing a solo playthrough because solo characters don't get any more exp. It is strictly more difficult. While splitting experience between all party members won't help a solo character once they reach the level cap, this mechanic would at least help until that point. And it will also balance the game for party sizes larger than 4, so everyone benefits!