Carefully pre-positioning the whole party before combat is just one thing. The dirty chain system (only one character selected + all the group follows), together with several other bad choices in the movement system, and in various other systems for that matter, create issues even for the lay players.

On occasions, you'll talk to a non-hostile creature, and the conversation cutscene will lead straight into a fight. I have experienced the following problems.

  • Enemies win initiative. They're melee enemies. Also, Gale happens to find himself at the front of my team, right in melee range ... WTF ?
  • My dual-wielding Fighter wins initiative ... and finds herself in the back. If I'm a bit unlucky, she can't even get to the enemies she is supposed to hack, because ranged characters are in the way. (Yes, this problem is also a consequence of BG3 characters not being to move through allies, contrary to 5E rules. The bad party movement system combines with other bad movement systems to create bad results.) I could spend a Bonus Action to Jump, but that means I'm effectively wasting an attack.

I feel one doesn't need to be a dedicated optimiser to think that squishy and ranged characters should stay in the back and that tanky melee warriors should stand in the frontline. This would be guaranteed if the party could walk in formation.

(Another closely-related issue is that only the character that was selected when I initiated a conversation can talk during the conversation. So even if I have a satisfying formation, I need to select my charismatic Sorcerer and bring him to the front if I want to have better odds, should some Charisma check be involved.)


Like many others above, I strongly doubt that Larian is going to change much about the party controls. And I certainly doubt that a selection-box method will ever be implemented, it's too big of a change. But I hope we can still obtain the following features.

  • Select several characters and, tadaa!, we have a group, that we can move around. No need to ungroup anyone. Basically ditch the concept of "group" and replace it by "selection".
  • Perform this multiple-characters selection with Ctrl + left click on portrait, or Ctrl + portrait number.
  • Have the selected characters walk in formation. No accordion effect when movement starts and stops. No madness around ladders.
  • When all my party is selected, and I click on an elevator, have all the party take the elevator. Use logic/player inputs for movement, not some dubious physics.
  • Have characters not gather/converge so long as I'm not asking them to move. In particular : they should not move back together automatically after a fight ends.
  • Issue commands to all the selected characters. The top-needed command is Stealth. It would also be great to have Stop Moving.
  • Decouple summons from their summoners.



While I don't have my hopes too high, and I don't want to give anyone false hopes, I feel compelled to note the following two improvements that have been implemented since the launch of EA.

  • Patch 3 added the follow-on-jump : all the chained character follow a character that jumps. This turned a system that was very bad to one that is still very bad but slightly less so.
  • Patch 5 added the group all/ungroup all function. Although in a very stealthy, undocumented fashion (which we can interpret in several ways). Again, a baby step, but at least it's in the right direction.

I'm sure Larian knows that many players hate the current party movement system. I wouldn't be surprised if some devs agree that it is a poor one. The question is whether Larian will do something about it.