Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Steady increase of companions SLOTS through gameplay

In short:

would a slow but steady increase of open companion slots (1 more every 2-3 levels) make the game more interesting/exciting?

Long:

For me, what's keeping me focused on this type of games is:
* Leveling up and gaining new spells/skills
* getting more and different characters into my party
* exloring / tresurehunting

With current game progression it seems to me that in the beginning you get alot of levels/additional companions way too fast and in the later game this progression is significant lower.

Maybe it would be alot more interesting to be forced with a lower number of companions SLOTS in the beginning and get more companions only later in game to keep the suspense-level high thoroughout the game. Maybe also lower the experiencepoint progression in early game a bit.

Right now you can get everything / 5 party members and level 3 within 10-15 minutes of gameplay (if you focus on killing all enemies in the introduction level at the ship).

Best would be to be forced to only get 1 companion in the beginning of the game and slowly gaining more slots for additional companions, maybe 1 additional slot every 2 level - and i am very sure they will implement the possibility of a 6 chars party in full release, but this should be accessible only from level 10.

This way the anticipation level would stay high throughout the whole game.
I doubt it would be difficult to implement - you can meet all those additional characters still quite early in game but you are limited in the number of player slots you can take with you.

It'll be better when final release. There are already a number of characters that we know of that they are planning on adding as party members.

Karlach
Halsin
Minthara
Barcus

And who knows who else.

Has Halsin as a companion ever actually been confirmed? I thought it has just been popularly requested, nothing more

I don't think they've confirmed 100%, that is true, for they don't really confirm anything, but the signs are there.

For example, you can ask Karlach to join you, but presently she gives some bogus reason that really makes no sense as to why she can't. I believe she's likely a paladin, so if paladin isn't ready yet, they can't have her join yet.

Barcus all but agrees to join your party if you play your cards right. He'll even join your camp. Halsin too, really. I think they're limiting him joining because he should be a way higher druid and, well, level cap. Volo joins your camp as well if you do things right, but since bard isn't ready...

They have confirmed that we don't have all the origin characters. We only have the not good ones, if I recall correctly. So we know more are coming.

Well ... actualy none of them is "confirmed" im affraid ...

Karlach was semi-confirmed by datamining, but problem with that kind of stuff is that its all subject to change ... so we can at best concider her "very much probable" but still not certain.

I never heard even single word either from Larian, or from any Dataminer about the rest that they should become actual companion. O_o
Not sure where that came from.

Not sure if spoiler tag is even needed, tho. :-/

I would say there is most likely more "not prepared yet" about her than just that ...
(Yet another datamined content points out this way.)

Also...

Especialy if she is a Paladin ... it would be nothing easier to allow us to recruit her as a Cleric for now, until her class will be prepared. o_O
Same if she is suppose to be a Barbarian ... in such case they could simply give her Fighter class as a placeholder.

I still believe it would be great to release all "missing" companions that are allready planned, but dont have classes prepared yet like this ... going through the same location, doing the same quests, and picking the same (since we re-played it so many times we allready see them all) choices would be a LOT less tedious, if we could bring different companions with us, that would have different reactions on our actions. :3

🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

OK. It's true. I know nothing except this:

They said there would be more characters.

However, I'm looking at the writing on the wall. Who joins your camp currently? Halsin and Volo and now Barcus. Who can you actually ask to join your party even though they turn you down? Karlach, Halsin and Barcus; though Halsin and Barcus join your camp. Volo just kind of invites himself, really, but if he's at your camp, it makes sense that he'll likely be playable as a party member.

So yes, I'm assuming, but it is based on some pretty big signs. I mean, why have all these people at your camp if you can't have them join you in the party? Withers might even be a playable character, though he's probably not since story-wise he's OP and just there for resurrection purposes. Granted, Halsin and Volo could be the same, but at least Halsin doesn't seem like it.

Anyway, I'm hoping for at least Halsin and Karlach.

Karlach is the only one of those we know who is going to be a potential party member. There are three origin characters in the pipeline that will be playable/available as companions and we know their names already.

Well, you missed a bit my original intention. i was adressing the fact that there are already too many companion slots (4) open from the very beginning and it maybe would be much more interesting if those slots would slowly be raised (maybe until 6) throughout the progress of game.

I had a weird idea that the companions will all be killed of at the end act one, and we continue with the "other halfs".

Mizora
Cazador
The Orb
The Nightsong
Voss
(Anders)

There will be more companions/origins, Karlach being one of them, thanks to datamining, and her having a tadpole. Other mentioned can't be companions, as they can't be origins - unless Larian will add non-origin companions on top of 9ish? (not sure on the number) origins. As far as I am aware there is absolutely nothing suggesting that Halsin and Co. might become anything more then "camp followers" outside wishful thinking of some.

Having more companions per chapter or something like that would be nice, assuming the game would be designed for it, but:
1) if larian would be willing to support party of 4 or 5 or 6 then why wouldn't they do so from the get go?
2) It would be odd for Larian to support varied multiplayer experience for different chapters.
3) If my hunch and my reading of old Larian statements are correct, then the problem OP describes won't exist past chapter one, as BG3 might follow D:OS2 formula and ax spare companions at the end of chapter 1, leaving us with 4.

Oh, i completely forgot about multiplayer. Of course then my idea of steady increasing companion slots is not practical anymore

Bottom line. We're all just speculating. So...

For the love of God stop calling Volo a bard, he isn't one, our character call him a bard only because he is forced to do bard's work at that moment. He is a travelling scholar and a weak wizard. Or are you really finding his singing inspiring?
And no, the fact that characters join our camp doesn't mean they will be our companions. Larian announced those characters long ago as "camp followers", who will provide some convenience inside the camp, maybe will join us for a certain mission, but won't be our companions. And they had it the same way in previous games.

Ok. Fine. Whatever.

I thought Volo was closest to a Bard. I mean, he's annoying regardless and I've never liked him, and he pretty much sucks at everything, and somehow is still alive - somehow.

And fine. Whatever. I know nothing. Nobody really knows nothing. They're going to do whatever they feel like doing. So yes, just because they're at camp means nothing. I was just speculating based on what it seems to me.

And I no longer care.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Volothamp_Geddarm

I dunno ...
I would say that "storyteller" is (in matter of classes) Bardic enough ...
We also have seen him sing a ballad for us on our camp celebration, while he was playing the lute ...

As for inspiration ... hard to tell, since i never find any singing in game inspiring, more like anoying and Volo mastered that perfectly ...
For the record, GM didnt say he is a "good" Bard.

First of all here https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Volothamp_Geddarm ,(read further than first paragraph)
Second you're using some false logic here. Telling stories and singing is not restricted to bards. The ability to inspire others through those activities is restricted to bards in Faerun.

I honestly never cared enough to look up what Volo was. That's how much I didn't like him. I didn't like him in NWN2 Storm of Zehir, and I like him less in BG3. He's more annoying than C-3PO, and I think he's Faerun's sad attempt to recreate Tom Bombadil.

Eliminster is Gandalf.
Volo is Tom Bombadil.

But it doesn't matter. I only brought up Volo because he joins you at camp. I though maybe he'd be a playable companion even though I'd never actually put him in my party... Unless he had some interesting story development reason.

The point is, more companions are coming, but OPs right. That's not really what they're suggesting.

As far as party size, that's a whole megathread. I believe others have brought up this idea also at one point or another. Start with 2. Get up to 6 eventually or even 8; slowly over time. Only allow a few at a time and gradually increase.

I personally don't like it. I'd like to start with party of 6 max. Makes the most sense from a story perspective. If I crashed in an airship and landed in a hostile land with intellect devourers, goblins, gnolls, giant spiders, bugbears, owlbears and ogres - not to mention other nasty things - an army would not be big enough. I'd accept ALL the help I could get as I travel the area every day. A party of 2-4, in my opinion, does not equal "Full up".

And, multiplayer. You can have up to 4 players. So, I'm fighting for Party of 6 partially because Party of 4 doesn't allow you to even have any other party members at all. Thus, no side quest story elements like Lae'zel intimidating Zorru or Shadowheart freaking out at Moonhaven. No Wyll and Spike. If you're party of 4-ing with multiplayer, you can't fully appreciate the game, and I'd love to play 4 players with a few slots available for at least 1 or 2 origin so I COULD play seriously with 3 other players and enjoy the game to the fullest.

But then... Doesn't sound like multiplayer is being designed for adventuring together fun so you can fully enjoy the game with friends. It's for trolling friends. So I don't think they care. Want to play BG3 seriously? Play single player. Nevertheless, single player game experience is influenced by multiplayer. So...

Nothing really matters... Anyone can see... Nothing really matters. Nothing really matters... To them.

Anyway the wind blows!

I mean it’s not too far off from Alfira so it’s difficult to discern what is and isn’t intentionally bad.

I see where you're coming from OP, but I personally don't think it would work for a couple of reasons. The first is because that mechanic would draw potentially too much attention to the party system as a whole. People already have issues with not being able to take their whole party out with them in games like this, but I suspect that most players shrug it off simply because the headcount limit a common convention of the genre. Gamefying it in the way you describe without a good justification could draw more explicit attention to how arbitrary it is, which could rub more players the wrong way.

The larger problem I see though, is that that severely party interaction. Only being able to have two or three characters in your party means that you potentially miss out on character stuff like what GM pointed out. And I'm certain a lot of players play games like this for the character interaction and character story, so forcing them to miss out for a long stretch of time would be pretty disappointing. Furthermore, I think the experience you describe of reaching level 3 with a full party in 15 minutes won't be the typical experience. I typically don't hit level 4 until several several hours in. I usually am at level 4 a bit before I'm ready to go to the goblin camp, which I think is the intended progression. You are right though that you gain levels faster in the early game and it slows down by around 5th level. From what I understand that's how the D&D system is meant to operate.