Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General 4 Character Party Limit Too Small?

I don't think it's a coincidence that just about everyone in here that was around for Pillars of Eternity downsizing party members from 6 in the first game to 5 in the second game really want the party member cap to be raised in BG3. A lot of the concerns about the difficulty balance being out of whack or turns taking too long are really just theoretical at best.

However, the downsizing had a pretty interesting effect on how certain classes were perceived. Even losing 1 party member slot resulted in party build discussion veering drastically towards min-max considerations rather than plugging up strategic holes or strengthening your specialties further. For example, Druids went from being considered a great utility caster in the first game to being a gimmick class that doesn't do anything particularly well compared to Wizard and Cipher in the second game. This also had the unfortunate side effect of Teketu seemingly being the least used party member in Deadfire by a pretty wide margin.

(As far as I'm aware, Serafen is probably the second least used party member, but not because his class is considered bad. His case is more accurately attributed to Ciphers being one of the most popular player character classes, and Serafen's personal Cipher class having a very bad RNG mechanic tied to his spellcasting that player character Ciphers don't have to deal with.)

I'm actually very interested to see what the party class breakdown would even look like in BG3 with the 4 party member limit. For example, I suspect Lae'zel is going to be completely ditched by the majority of the community once the Paladin class or the companion are available. Even in Solasta, I immediately felt the sheer loss of utility going from a playthrough where my main frontline tank was a Paladin to a playthrough where that role was taken by a Fighter.

I made this argument almost a whole year ago, but it does kinda bear repeating again.

With a 4 party limit, my plan is basically this:

- PC archery-focused Bard
- Gale
- Shadowheart
- Karlach only if she's a Paladin, otherwise I'll go with Wyll, shift my Bard and Shadowheart into being hybrid ranged/tank, and just focus entirely on cheese stealth alpha strikes like I've already been doing in the EA.

With a 6 party limit, I'd probably shift to the below instead.

- PC archery-focused Bard
- Gale
- Shadowheart
- Karlach as either Paladin or Barbarian
- Wyll because I legitimately like him
- Minsc or Halsin (assuming Halsin becomes a party member)

Yeah, I heavily favor magic and archery setups, the limit in this case basically controls what my front line would look like.