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

To be clear, most arguments I've read are NOT arguing for an increased multiplayer-limit along with an increased party size limit. The max number of players would still be 4; some players would control multiple characters in a 6-person party. I agree that playing BG3 with 5 other real people would likely be a...not enjoyable experience.

And again, Larian wouldn't need to adjust any encounters. Instead, they could scale exp so a party-of-6 is lower-leveled than a party of 4. All encounters could remain designed for a party-size of 4. Alternatively, they could adjust all encounters for a party of 6 as per @GM4Him's wishes, and then give smaller-parties boosted exp. Whichever.

Main problem i have with your examples GM4HIM ...
Is that you are counting with party of 6 ... you dont seem to take it as option, when you adjust mob stats, but as the only option. :-/

I mean, yeah cool if they adjust imps and intellect devourers, party of 5 or 6 will deal with them just fine.

But what exactly will do that player, who dont want to have so huge party right from the start?
Or who just wants to create single custom character?

No. I get you. I know there are people who want to just play the game with a party of four or by themselves. The problem is you can't build a game on that unless you're going to create some sort of level of difficulty options. You have to start with a baseline. And that's my point. The baseline should be a party of six with normal stats based on 5e. Then you can create an option for four players or a single player mode or whatever with stats that are nerfed.

I'm in a strange position where I wouldn't mind an option for having 6 members of a party in a video game, but I'd strongly prefer to have max 3-4 people in actual tabletop. In tabletop, 4 + DM is the sweet spot for my preferences. Weird take, hence kinda wanted to share it :P

I see ...
Well i would preffer to keep everything else as it is.

I mean it would be easier to ballance around middle ground.
Difficiulty settings was allready promised by Swen and if party size would be implemented as separate toggable option there ... i kinda see that as win/win scenario ...

Well... I would think it would be easier to start with the rule system that they are basing it on with a party size that works with the already established rules. Then tweak to fit whatever.

So, if a party of 6 with established 5e rules is balanced, start there and create party of 4 and tweak stats and rules. What they seem to be doing is balancing for a party of 4 and stripping the rules first.

That said, I've often actually wondered if they HAVE the full game with 5e rules already set and they aren't giving it to us because they know it works. So, because it's EA, they are actually only giving us homebrew nerfed rules to test them to see what works for 4 party and even down to single. In other words, we're the guinea pigs for OTHER difficulty settings.

A guy can hope anyway. 😁

Start? Maybe ...
But that thing happened few years back.

Now it would mean to rework every encounter, start to test them and ballancing from the scratch ... just so they can start tweaking thins back.

Not exactly effective solution if you ask me. :-/

Right. But my 2 points are that they mostly need reworking anyway especially once you lift the level cap, and I honestly have to wonder if they already have been working from this perspective. They're just not telling us.

See, the more I'm digging in, the more I see signs that the originally built encounters using a party of six and 5e rules. So it seems like they started that way and nerfed everything. That's one of the main points I keep trying to make. I don't think they'd have to "rework every encounter." They'd literally just need to keep all encounters as is and provide us with the stats and rules they originally started with. Yes, if they didn't save their original work, that could mean a lot of extra work, but I doubt they deleted all their previous work.

For example, Imps in the beginning, back before all patches and even for a few patches, had Resistance. I think it was patch 3 or 4 that they stripped them of this. So, literally, go back and give them back their Resistance. Same with Intellect Devourers.

And as far as party of 6 goes, all they'd have to do is change 1 number from 4 to 6, as it was once able to be done in the Mod that is provided in this thread. 1 number. That's it. Party of 6 enabled. Proper stats restored by simply giving them BACK what they had in the beginning. Game balanced.

But, again, I'm suspecting that they are actually NOT doing this because they WANT us to test out their homebrews for the purposes of Difficulty and Game Settings. And if that's the case, then I'm all for it. Certainly, if they gave us true 5e rules and party of 6, too many would likely just run with those and NOT help them tweak other difficulty settings. So, in that regard, IF that is what they are doing, then it is VERY smart and clever.

I'm just hoping that is exactly what they are doing. If not, then I'm calling for them to give us the options for party of 6 and 5e... but that's just me nagging like Lae'zel wanting us to go to the Gith Creche.

Dunno ... if you are right and they are allready working on it, then lucky you i gues.
If you are wrong, then im affraid no power on Earth, Heavens, or Hells (maybe except WotC CEO) can force them.

I know you see the signs ... im just not quite sure if you see them bcs you were right, or bcs you want to see them ... if you know what i mean.
From my perspective, the chances are aproximately simmilar to that Larian was simply guessing that "monster like this will be fine right here" ... then they let us play for few months, and find out 70% of people die there ... so they simply adjusted the monster.

That is clasic tuning in games and have nothing to do with 5e ... you see they indeed removed resistanc from Imps and Intellect devourers, but they also added even more HP to Githyanki patrol. O_o
Therefore i dare to say that they are simply working with data we provided them ... sometimes we are dying much more than they expected > monster get nerf ... and sometimes we die a much less than they expected > monster get buff.
We can only pray that those experience will help them to prepare all those encountners we will never be able to test.

I agree with the statement that all they need is to change single number in code, yes.
The rest of is a little vague tho:
- You expect them to have proper 5e stats in early build (wich we dont know for sure)
- You expect them to have those stats still stored somewhere.
And the most problematic.
- You expect them to want this change.
- As i mentioned earlier, you would be ballancing the game for 6 member party ...

Personaly i find the last point as most problematic, since for some people tutorial with full party might seem a little overwhelming, especialy those who have little or zero experience with CRPG. :-/
And yes i am aware that there will be in some distant future difficiulty settings ... but we dont have them right now. :-/
They would need to create some kind of adaptive dificiulty, when number of your enemies would be set by size of your party ... bcs, logialy, if you ballance your game for 6 people, those who will simply go with Tav and Lae'zel will be screwed. :-/

Personaly i would be fine with just 6 members party ... i dont mind have combats a little faster (its not like there is any hard challenge right now anyway ... even Gith are quite easy when you are killing them for 20th time. :D) ... and once they start to implement difficiulty settings, it would be even better.

in pathfinder wrath of the righteous.. game was designed with 6 party characters. there seems to be people who played with 4 too and even solo. it's doable. but i won't be punishing myself nor am i having the guts to play the game solo. i'm having a tough challenge even with 6. there are alot of options in regards to the difficulty. like more enemies, enemies with scaled stats and enemies that behave differently as well like.. marking your squishies as sworn enemies.

since pathfinder can implement it, i believe larian can too. the question is only whether if they want to. bg3 has a AAA budget for an RPG while pathfinder wrath came from a small indie studio with no huge budgets. while bg3 looks very appealing visually, the core of the game is still the combat. so i hope larian would give us the options for 6 and customized difficulty options for people who wants to play the way they like to play it.

The idea is that you should always start big and then go smaller. If you develop the system for a larger party, you can make it so that it is smaller. If you try to do the reverse, that's when you run into difficulties. It is always more challenging to try to implement a larger party size after you've already based everything on smaller.

just to add.. i kickstarted pillars of eternity 2.. there was a huge backlash from the community and there are certain obsidian defenders trying to silent and bash whoever that brings up the 6 party character discussion. see how pillars of eternity 2 reception now. it was a financial failure. of course the issues are not just the party characters alone but it's one of the biggest hightlight. even a tweet from "critical role" about that 5 party characters. there are only few new characters. 3 of the existing characters were returned from pillars1 even. moral of the story don't alienate your core fanbase.

I FINALLY GOT IT TO WORK... but then I had to stop playing for the day.

BEHOLD: PARTY OF 6!!! TAV + ALL ORIGIN CHARACTERS


So, first you have to use the ExtratTool-v1.15.10 as instructed in the Mod instructions. Switch Max Party Size from 4 to 6 or 8. Save. I even used the Extract function and chose the same file folder as the Save I was using. Not sure that's necessary, but I did it anyway.

But here was the step that I had to do to make it work in the end. I loaded up the modified save file, and they still wouldn't let me add more than a party of 4. So I dismissed everyone from the party and reinvited everyone back into the party. THAT'S what made it work. Once I reinvited everyone, suddenly, on the 5th person, VIOLA! No more, "You're full up."

Now I just need to test combat with it. Looks like I'll be starting over my 4 Custom Character game to try it out... or I may just keep going with Tav and the gang! Yeah. I think I'll do that. Then I don't have to dismiss or pull in any characters at all for story content.

Ah! This is great! I can't wait!

congrats! that's really cool. while i still do not have any urgency in reinstalling bg3 (i only completed bg3 EA once during the first EA initially released), are there mods to tweak enemies stats? that will be a great start to be very honest. i'm really looking forward on the release date of this game and really wanted to play with 6 party characters. but encounter balance are still important especially with their restored dnd5e stats.

I did not see any mods for 5e stats or rules. I also still want Larian to just do this for us. This is a REALLY dumb workaround that requires us to hack the game just so we can change 1 number that THEY could give us the option to do. 1 number. That's it.

And yeah, haven't tested it yet, but I am guessing the game is going to be WAY too easy now. We'll see.

This needs to be pinned/saved somewhere for future reference!!

Initial feedback about party of 6:

Hugely enjoyable to me. Very satisfying. Fought the battle with the harpies, and it was pretty easy with 6. Yes, admittedly, the battle is probably too easy with 6. Gale almost got taken down, and Wyll got hit a couple of times, but it was an easy fight. Didn't even use a potion, and no one even healed anyone else with spells or nothing.

That said, I will say that the fight went MUCH quicker. So, the argument about adding 2 more slowing down combat is not true. It does go faster because YOU have more attacks, etc. per round. Sure, if they added more enemies, then it would be probably about the same in terms of how much time it takes, but ultimately I would say that it doesn't slow down combat at all. If anything, it's faster.

In terms of easy fight, I think the fight would be harder if they switched up the enemy AI a bit on those harpies. They all flew right down into the midst of my characters and just let us pound them to pieces. I also used Silence to disrupt their songs, so that didn't help them either. Harpies, also, should use multiattack with claws and clubs. So, again, implementing 5e stats would benefit this battle tremendously. This would make them more tough. They also just swoop down one at a time. It would make for a tougher fight if they swooped down all at once on all sides of my party and attacked all at once. Four or five harpies is nothing to sneeze at. 38 HP and 2 attacks per turn; 1 with claws and 1 with club for a potential of 3d4+3 damage (I think... off the top of my head) each per round. And, I do like that they can throw rocks. That makes it so that the battle would be tougher if you try to just peg them from a distance. If they kept their distance more and just kept pegging with rocks, even a party of 6 might have some serious trouble taking them down especially because of the homebrew height bonus (which I do think works). So, either the ranged strat or the melee swarm strat should be implemented to make this fight tougher, for either party of 4 or 6. I'd prefer the melee swarm strat, because the ranged one would probably be pretty annoying, considering that's the strat they used to use in like 4 patches ago, and it was annoying as heck. They'd constantly fly higher and gain a bonus to hit you and in their AC, and they'd just peg you off from a distance without you ever being able to hit them. So, I'd definitely recommend the melee swarm attack for the sanity of players. The occasional thrown rock is not so bad, but if they use it constantly and keep their distance, that's going to make the fight REALLY not fun.

Anyway, benefits of a party of 6 are that you never have to switch anyone out. The party members feel more like a team working together and talking together. I discovered that party members are talking more because there are more in the party. So, Gale is chatting with Lae'zel about the creche. Astarion then asks something about her and her creche like 30 seconds later. Shadowheart makes a comment a little bit after that, etc. I rescue the boy and Gale is right there. No having to go get Gale BEFORE the encounter so that I learn a bit more about his past. Everyone is interacting a LOT more in the game in various cutscenes, random dialogue, etc. THAT is freaking awesome. I also gave Wyll Speak with Animals, so I'm able to switch out to him to talk to every animal in the grove, and then I can switch to Astarion to pick locks. I can switch to Lae'zel to jump to further places or lift rocks. I can use everyone's skills and abilities as a full team, all without having to constantly go to camp to get the people I want PRIOR to triggering a cutscene that I have to know ahead of time will be better if I have a certain character with me (like having Gale in the party before saving the tiefling boy by the river from the harpies as mentioned above).

And carrying capacity as a party has greatly increased. I don't have to worry as much about encumbrance because now I have two more members to help carry everything. And here's another interesting thing I noticed. There aren't enough cool weapons to go around. Yes! Party of 6 means less magical items per character. I can't just fully equip the entire party with awesome gear right off the bat. I have to be a bit more strategic with it. Maybe Tav gets the good armor, Lae'zel gets the flaming sword, Shadowheart gets the Watcher's Spear, Wyll gets the ring with color spray, Astarion gets the amulet for speaking with dead, and Gale gets magic scrolls or something. I didn't do this. I noticed after the fact that Wyll and Gale and Astarion all have mostly basic weapons and equipment. I didn't have enough money to even remotely get them anything special. I know that will change. Eventually, I'll get enough to spread around so everyone can be fully magically equipped, but the point is that the progress for that is much slower now with 6 to spread it all amongst. So, in that regard, during the harpy fight, Gale and Wyll were easily slapped around by the harpies because their AC is still low and they don't have any cool gear. I didn't have enough to really boost them in that regards, making them weaker than if I only had 4 and was able to equip all 4 characters with better gear faster. So, what I'm saying is, I focused on Tav, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel, and they have better armor and gear, but Astarion, Gale and Wyll are still fairly low AC and their weapons are all their starter or just base short swords, etc., making half the party weaker than the other half. So, in that regard, it balances out.

Item management is also not a big deal. I simply scroll to the right and there are the other two. I can then right click and Send to Tav or Shadowheart or whoever, just like I normally would, to transfer items from one person to the next. There is no real added frustration or anything in that regard. Item management is still just as painful as with 4. So that also knocks down some people's fears that if they made this a party of 6 game then it would be so much worse because item management would take even more time. If anything, I'm not wasting as much time trying to juggle equipment around due to encumbrance. One person is encumbered, throw something at someone else. Again, with 2 more people, I have to send less things to camp or even worry as much about all the crap I'm picking up.

I would say that the biggest frustration for me with the party of 6 is actually the movement mechanics, and even that isn't that big of a deal. It's not that much worse than it already is. I've had a few times that I almost clicked on one of my party members and almost initiated dialogue. They do tend to get in the way a bit more than currently, but only really in zoomed in mode. When I'm zoomed out, it's about the same. Zoomed in, going up and down hills, that's when you start to feel the extra members getting in the way. I'm having to spin the camera a bit more to try to avoid triggering dialogue.

Even the single crouch function we gripe about isn't that much more of a pain. I mean, it's click on their portrait and hit the "C" key. It's four more clicks/button presses every time you want to group stealth. Though this could easily be fixed with the much needed Group Stealth feature that we've been fighting for, the point is that it isn't that much more of a pain point really.

All in all, I still need to test out the party of 6 more, but I would DEFINITELY say that the preliminary result is that the game is better for it. I am absolutely loving the fact that I now have the entire cast of origin characters in my party at one time, and they are all fighting together as a more cohesive team. Even if they didn't change a single thing about the encounters, the end result would be that players wouldn't need to long rest as much, making it more plausible from a story perspective. Characters would do a LOT more in one day than they can currently with a party of 4. Thus, the story would make a lot more sense because your party wouldn't be sleeping after every fight or 2 with a ticking time bomb tadpole in their heads. Of course, I still want them to implement more 5e stats for monsters, as that would make most of them tougher. As I said above with the harpies, giving them clubs and multiattack would make them SO much tougher, and they'd be a more challenging fight for a party of 4 or 6 both.

The biggest issue with less sleeping is that dialogue is tied to long rest. If they changed that so dialogue is triggered on the road or just at camp or whenever you short rest or whatever (except where it makes sense that it should only be at camp), then this wouldn't be an issue either. Gale's Go to Hell dialogue makes sense regardless of whether you are at camp or not. Click a Short Rest, and you should trigger that scene. He's just basically saying that you should have already started changing by that point. Same with his Mirror Image Dialogue. Even Shadowheart's "I'm not sure this is such a good idea," dialogue would be fine with a short rest. She's saying it because she isn't sure resting at all is a good idea. You need to find a healer and fast, so it would make sense even to trigger that with a Short Rest. Astarion biting you on the neck while you sleep only really makes sense during a long rest at camp, so I could see that remaining at camp, but most other dialogues should not. Of course, I think that dialogue with Astarion trying to bite you is off anyway and needs to be entirely reworked. It makes no sense especially if you're an elf who doesn't sleep. And think about it, even if you're a human, why would he bite you in the midst of the entire camp with everyone else around? Come on. What'd he think would happen? Did he think you wouldn't cry out in pain or anything? And where is everyone while you're having this convo about almost getting drained of all your blood? Shouldn't Gale and Shadowheart and Lae'zel be all ready to kill him?

Anyway, sorry. Didn't mean to go off on that tangent in this post. The point is that party of 6 is incredibly fun. I am enjoying it a lot and I'm going to keep testing it to see just how hard/easy the fights are and to see whatever else might be a bonus or handicap with such an option implemented. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and it doesn't glitch, by the way. It functions just fine as if it was meant to be how the game is played. What I mean is that you don't have characters doing weird things like jumping off cliffs or being left behind or something (any more than they do currently, anyway). The only weird thing I've noticed is that sometimes characters are standing inside one another. Astarion and Gale were blending with Lae'zel during dialogue sequences. But the game does that sometimes anyway.

I also thought it was cool that when I slept for the night, 4 party members were sleeping/meditating on their bedrolls, but the other two were sitting nearby, as if keeping watch. They were ALL at the camp around the fire, as one party instead of just four with the others just not there at all. Wyll and Gale were keeping watch while Astarion, Tav, Shadowheart and Lae'zel were in the bedrolls.

Ah! More please! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make this an option, Larian. I don't want to have to mod this game in the future to make this happen. I really don't like mods. REALLY don't like them. I keep thinking it's going to eventually screw up my computer.

PLEASE! Party of 6. At least as an option! I'M BEGGING YOU ON HANDS AND KNEES WITH MY HANDS FOLDED AND TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE CRYING OUT AND SHAKING VIOLENTLY!

Thank you... ahead of time...

... please... please... please...

Hope this gets passed on to the devs, because it is clear, detailed, excellent feedback. THANK YOU!!!

Still very much enjoying the party of 6 playthrough. It's made me realize I've neglected Wyll on most playthroughs. I'm seeing dialogues I've never seen before, and I'm not sure if they're Patch 6 related or just that I haven't had Wyll in my party enough at various points.

For example, when talking to Zevlor after Kagha, Zevlor addresses Wyll and talks to him directly about going after the goblins. I've never seen that dialogue before because I don't think I've ever had Wyll with me at that point. I usually send him to camp because I'm already full up. During Raphael's scene, Wyll actually speaks to him and freaks out that he's a cambion. Is that just because he's apart of my party?

And here's a dialogue I've never seen before. Wyll says that he used to be very powerful, but now he's a weakling. Gale then responds that it's because of the tadpoles. They've left us completely weak and starting over, basically.

Thus, they confirm what I thought was the case the whole time but I've never seen anyone in the game actually say it. All the characters used to be super powerful, including Tav. However, they've been reset to Level 1 because of Tad the Tadpole.

Anyway, again, never saw these things before, and now I am seeing them... lots of new dialogue and such... all because we're traveling as one party of 6. It's REALLY a major highlight of this playthrough and has rekindled my love for the game.

I will say that I am noticing the characters inside one another more in dialogues. That is a not so cool element of party of 6. It's not that big a deal, but seeing Wyll, Astarion and Lae'zel all blended together during dialogues is a bit weird. Fix that and thus far I'd say we're golden.

BTW. I bought the Spellthief bow for Tav to try to buy yet another cool weapon to spread out amongst a party of 6. Dang! Had to sell almost all my cool potions and scrolls and such to get it. Now I'm really stretched thin on potions and revivify and so forth. Wyll, Gale and Astarion are still not really equipped with any good gear. Guess we'll see how party of 6 does without very many potions and revivify scrolls and such. I only have 6 healing potions in total and I sold ALL my revivify scrolls. Should be a good test. Will I need them or will the battles be so easy that I don't?

Owlbear fight. Too easy with party of 6 especially with Andrick and Brynna.

Goblin fight inside Bogrot east entrance? Nice. Still didn't lose anyone or need a potion, but MOST of the party of 6 was at less than 10 HP by the time the battle was over. It's a good fight that COULD go worse for a party of 6 or WAY better, depending on RNG. The important thing to note, though, is that it isn't frustrating. I didn't even go first, and I didn't get surprise, and I triggered it so that they were on the rooftops with height bonus and everything, and I didn't feel like I was going to need to reload. I almost used a potion or two, but then I started turning the tide and winning. All in all, it was a good party of 6 fight that wasn't so hard that I feel like I need to long rest now. I can keep going with my adventure.

Keep in mind, I'm not using as many homebrews and gimicks as I can not use. So, no potion throwing, and I'm using drink potion as an action for most people, etc. I'm also not cheating with broken stealth mechanics and sniping the crap out of enemies before they even get to take a turn. I'm, for the most part, testing the game as if I'm a newby player to D&D and I don't really know all the tricks for stealth and height and so forth. So, if you do apply the expert, I know how to play the game super well with positioning everyone on high ground before a fight and stealthing around behind people to get extra attacks and just peg them off from a distance with Astarion who can keep hidden longer, etc., then yes. Party of 6 with current enemy stats and homebrew mechanics will make the game SUPER UBER BORING EASY. As much as I want party of 6, that's just the truth of it. Then again, that's true for Party of 4 too. When I start applying the game's gimicks, the game becomes SO SUPER EASY BORING. So, honestly, it really isn't much different in that regard. I still think they need to remove more of those gimicks, and especially with party of 6.

So yes, I'm still greatly in favor of party of 6, even IF they don't take out all the homebrew and they don't implement more 5e rules and stats. Why? Because I can actually adventure and defeat enemies and such without feeling like I have to long rest after just about every fight, etc. I left the grove after taking a long rest, visited the harper camp, met Andrick and Brynna, helped them kill the owlbear, met Scratch, fought the gobbos at the east gate of Blighted Village, and I can still keep adventuring with only having used a short rest. I don't need to go back to camp and long rest after only adventuring for maybe thirty minutes tops. It feels more like a genuine adventure instead of adventure for a tiny snippet, get my butt kicked, sleep for 23 1/2 hours, adventure again for 30 minutes, get my butt kicked, sleep for 23 1/2 hours... and all with a ticking time bomb tadpole in my head. It's more natural feeling.

And again, I can't stress this enough, SO much more party interaction. It's like super night and day. I'm receiving dialogue I've literally never heard before while just moving about the map. The party is really talking to one another, asking each other questions, bantering, etc. It's my favorite part of the party of 6. SO much more dialogue on the road. I can't even begin to tell you. It really makes the party feel more like a team and like they're alive and really getting to know one another.

Now, if they'd just remove major dialogue sequences from long rest camp, then we'd be set.

So, you know, you short rest, trigger Gale's Go to Hell dialogue as if you set up a camp right where you were to short rest; fire and all. Then, short rest a second time, Shadowheart asks if it's a good idea. You need a healer. Then you long rest and Gale triggers his mirror image dialogue... not that it's tied to camp but just that the next time you long or short rested it triggers one of the dialogues.

Anyway, whatever the case, party of 6 is now the ONLY way I'm going to be playing this game. If I absolutely must, I will mod it, but I REALLY hope I don't have to and they implement more 5e stats and rules so that it is a bit more challenging than current. Even if it isn't, though, it's still WAY better than party of 4.