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

6 is too many for a turn based game like this IMO. Some of the longer fights in act 1 already drag out a bit long and thats with 4 chars to control. I’d bet they play-tested 6 earlier in development and decided yeah this is too slow.

See, this is a prime example of what I was saying. If there was an option for a party of 6, with the 4-person mode left unchanged, it wouldn't affect you at all.

I agree that if Larian balanced the entire game around a party of 6 AND compensated by increasing the number of enemies you face, combat might take even longer. But if Larian increase enemy HP and/or use stronger enemies instead of adding more enemies, you'd actually be able to play the game more! Assuming you're controlling all or half of the characters, your turn in a 6-person-party would come up about 50% more often than it would playing with a 4-person party.

Here's an idea that I don't think has been explored. What if your party size was determined by your choice of Pantaloons from the game launch window?

Now The Golden Pantaloons they do one thing, they set the party at 4 the designer's default.

The Pantaloons of the Soloist set the party at 1 and The Double Dragon Pantaloons set the party at 2.

The Pantaloons of Many Colours set the party at 6

Now everyone has the right pantaloons for what they're after. They can just key the settings off whatever makes sense for the chosen pantaloons heheh

I dont understand this premise ...
More ppl means you get to your turn more often ... meaning your party do more damage .... meaning combat is shorter on the contrary. O_o

I mean you still control single character at the time that dont change.

So don't use 6. There you go. I've solved your huge problem for you.

Actually, I just don't think turn base game is for you buddy, if it's "too long".
That's the whole point, why not play a game like DMC than? Fast paced, requires skills and it's not long at all, you see someone you want dead, you go there and kill them, no waiting for your character to listen to commands at all.
The difference is minimal, if not faster since you're still technically doing the same thing, just more often, meaning it's faster.

"Glut" is your answer as long as the Game only provides a legal party of 4

It also means changing every single fight by either increasing the number of enemies you fight or increasing their HP pools/number of abilities to keep the same difficulty. So yes your party does more damage but the enemies would as well do more as well as soak more. Net effect is longer combats with more turns total as i said. It sounds like you have never developed/balanced games so ill let it slide

Not to mention this late in development if they have been balancing every encounter for a party of 4 then suddenly changing to six is not going to happen.

No. This has been gone over repeatedly in this thread. Larian could simply modify exp gain per character, with the simplest method being dividing exp equally between all participating characters. A party of 6 would be lower level than a party 4 of, auto-balancing itself. No need to change any encounters. Larian can continue balancing combats for a party of 4, and parties of <4 or >4 would rely on the exp and level difference.

It's also not that late in development. Larian will have to do a final change to ~all encounters after they settle on final mechanics (e.g., removing high ground Advantage likely changed a lot of combat difficulties), so it wouldn't add that much work to need to add an enemy or two to the fights. Copy-paste enemies.

Edit: Furthermore, many people are simply asking for an option of a 6-person party without changing anything else about the game. So by definition, Larian wouldn't have to adjust encounters to give us this suggestion.

And let's not forget they when they finally implemented difficulty settings, that will also fix balancing issues. So if you feel like the battles are too easy with a 6 character party you can increase the difficulty level, or if you feel that for character party is too hard, decrease the difficulty level.

Says who, exactly?

Personaly i would be totally cool with option to have 6 members party without any futher adjustment, or reballance ...
After all, Larian specificly told us that they expect some modder to create 6member party mod if they dont ... and while there probably will be someone so dedicated to the cause, so he would go through every game aspect to reballance it ... first mods will be just "Maximum party members set to 6" (instad of 4) ...

So ...
Give me sign, that by taking another two followers i ruin combat ballance with button "I either accept or never cared in the first place"
And im totally happy. :P

Or they could allow parties of six and NOT do anything else. Easy enough.

You can't base party size on encounter balance. Why? Because party size is already too varied. From the very beginning of the game, the first encounter, you could have the MC, Lae'zel and Us OR just you and Lae'zel OR you, three other players, Lae'zel and Us, or you, three other players and Lae'zel. It depends on who you have playing. Is it single-player mode or multi?

So right from the beginning, the argument about party size and balance is out the window because there is no balance based on party size. Besides, the imps that you first fight, three of them, mind you, are supposed to be much tougher with resistance and so forth, so immediately the first encounter itself is built, actually, with a five or six character party in mind (you, three players and Lae'zel), but it's nerfed because it's too hard for the player if there is only one player and Lae'zel. Three imps with proper stats would most likely wipe the floor with 2 level 1 characters.

And the whole game is like this. Take the wood woads and mud mephits. Nerfed. Why? Too hard for even 4 level 4 characters. You really should have 6 if you used proper stats. So instead of giving us 6, Larian has limited us to 4 and nerfed enemies.

Take the Phase Spider Matriarch fight. It started out several patches ago as such an incredibly difficult fight that it took me a million reloads to do. Why? Because they did some sort of funky homebrews with their spiders and made them impossibly tough for a party of 4 level 4 characters. Now what have they done? Nerfed them so they aren't so tough.

But look at the gith! That fight is still really tough for 4 level 4's, but it wouldn't be so bad for 6 level 4's or even level 5's.

What's my point? The argument about balance is, in my opinion, invalid because they need to work on balance anyway, and they said some time ago that eventually there would be difficulty settings. So, they're going to have to revamp their encounters regardless of party size anyway.

For me, the bottom line is, what makes the most sense for this game? It all goes back to these things:

1. With a party of 6, you can have more characters in your party so you don't have to constantly switch characters out in order to trigger origin character story elements. I can have all the current origin characters in my single player party and not have to switch out one in order to get Shadowheart's full story, or switch out another to get Wyll's or switch out another to get Lae'zel's. All of them can just be in my party at once and we can trigger many more cutscenes without annoyingly having to switch characters out.

2. For 4-player multiplayer, I can still trigger origin story content by having at least 2 origin characters in the party. Thus, multiplayer is more enjoyable, and you can still experience the whole game the way D&D was meant to be played, with others. Right now, that's not possible. You cannot even have Lae'zel interrogate Zorru to find the githyanki patrol because your party is full up with 4.

3. A party of 6 allows players more variety for strategy and combat.

And a party of 6 = more actions / round.
Considering that they added new bonus actions, I guess they think 4 actions / round is not enough...

Is this suppose to be argument pro 6 memeber party, or against it?

This is it exactly! Party size is already something that can vary within the game, by Larian's own design! So arguing against the option of a party size of six based on encounter design is obviously an invalid argument.

Wrong, it actually a proof of how party size affects difficulty in encounters. Killing commander Zhalk with just Lae'zel is extremely difficult, with Lae'zel, US and Shadowheart it's a piece of cake.

Ah, I'm just done. It's obvious we will not convince some. I only hope Larian sees that there are more people who want a 6 member party than 4.

I'd be happy if they just added one more for a 5 player party.
Main reason being it opens up for a lot more combo's of classes.

I'm definitely positive to a 6 party as well, but 4 just locks you too hard to the archetypes of classes you have to bring.

I know you are ignoring my coments, but i ask anyway ... maybe someone else will repeat it to you and maybe you answer me after that.
Who exactly said having more party members "does not affect dificiulty of encounters"? O_o

I thought that people were talking about that game remains the same (no tuning, no changing, no adjusting to bigger party) and litteraly nobody cares about unballancing it.
I thought that point of those posts you quoted is that people dont wish this game to be reballanced for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 party members respectively ... just being ALLOWED to have them, litteraly nothing more!

Also killing General is not "extremely difficiult" ...
As long as you posses protection from evil and good (or other AC buff that reduces chance that Mind Flayer will be hit, none other i know about is as effective as disadvantage tho), then Illithid will kill the general himself, honestly our 1-5 damage once per aproximately 5-10 turns when we finaly dont miss ... dont do so much difference.

(A little offtopic: GM4Him ... now when i mentioned it, i remembered that this is why i was against incerasing levels for everyone ... your own significance is then lost quite fast, when "big boys play" .)