Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Will Companions Be Class Flexible?

I was looking for this and cannot find anything from Larian on it. Just wondering if anyone else can confirm...

Will companions be class flexible? In Divinity 2 when you recruited companions it gave you the option to make them pretty much anything that you wanted. Or do you think the classes are too important to the characters to make them flexible? For example Shadowheart not being a Cleric seems a bit odd... or Gale not being a Wizard. It also seems like there are some current dialogue options that kind of require certain companions to be the class that they are preset to.

... or Wyll not being a Warlock. But that's the 3 whose class is strongly tied to their story.

But Astarion could be ... well, Rogue works, but perhaps also Bard, or Fighter ... Whatever, he's a noble from the city whose profile does not scream "adventurer".

In my view, Lae'zel could be Fighter, Barbarian or Paladin (of Vlakith) pretty much equally.

Likewise, Minsc isn't the most rangery of Rangers, and could be a Fighter.

I can't remember for sure if Larian said anything about this. I'd say probably not. But I feel as if they may have said something about it.

EDIT : oh, yeah, from the FAQ in this very section of the forum.

I genuinely hope for that to NOT be the case.
At very most I'd take "subclass flexibility", but when it comes to premade companions I'm not the biggest fan of that either.
It's the kind of stuff I'd leave to modding.

I'm not in favor of it to be honest.

If they allow it, it should be heavily restricted since their classes are part of the companion's personality. I can imagine multiclassing as an option for companions though, e.g. Minsc (once we get him) as a ranger/barbarian since he is meant to be a Rashemi berserker if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, he's pretty much a barbarian berserker, except he was introduced as a character before the class was an actual thing available in D&D (or at very least in Bioware's D&D, can't be bothered to check at what point 2nd Edition introduced the barbarian in pen & paper).

Still, I'm guessing that at this point he's pretty well established as a ranger in everyone's imaginary and they won't change that.

AD&D 1st edition introduced the barbarian as a class in "Unearthed Arcana", AD&D 2nd edition then cut/removed the class and added it as a "kit" in the "Complete Fighter's Handbook".

Yeah, he's too well established as a ranger, hence the possible multiclass option. That way he'd still start out as ranger.

I feel classes are too closely tied to characters to just allow players to change them when recruiting the companions. Who Shadowheart could be if not a priest of Shar? It is a different system then D:OS2 which was classless - really, what set of skills our characters invested in was rather irrelevant. When/if multiclassing becomes available it should still provide some measure of customisation.

That said I wouldn’t be opposed if they created some in-game, in-lore way to respect our heroes including changing the class - one could add this to the plethora of gameplay conveniences that tadpoles provide.

Though my preferred method would be something similar to what Deadfire did - a limited choice of class selection for each companion that makes sense storywise.

It would be hard to make Shadowheart anything else than a cleric of Shar, or Gale a Wizard or Wyll a warlock. I would be ok with multiclassing, but storywise some companions just don't make sense as anything else.

I think class flexibility in NPC companions is possible in some other RPGs but not in a D&D RPG. Classes are a core element of the D&D system, and as such are too fundamental to a character's identity.

Yeah, multiclassing would be okay though (and even welcome).

I wanted to say that i hope not ...
But then i realized that i dont really care ... i will certainly keep them all what they are now, since that makes sense for them ...

And if someone wish to make Gale Fighter for some reason ... well, what could i say but: Have fun.

There will be nothing stoping us from playing him as multiclass Wizard 1 and all other to Fighter ...

And even if there would be some restriction for Origin characters multiclassing (wich would be a shame imho) mods will allow us to screw this anyway.

So ... basicaly ... why even try to resist?

Given that characters classes is part of their history I very much hope they dont do this. It would be abit silly...

I recall Larian was considering being able to customize the origin characters.

If they don't, that is fine by me (personally).

I would like the ability to make custom characters without multi-player hi-jinx. This way the player can have multiple play-throughs and balance each party...or just try different party combinations.

Being able to multi-class origin characters, may simplify things, and ultimately may be an option by game design.

If you don't want to than just stay pure-class.

Gale has

so it will probably happen eventually. Every companion getting a pool of story appropriate classes.

I would love for companions to be random classes each game...but my wishes rarely come true.

You can always look forward to that when they add the mercenaries to the game in some ways.

Could be because the full game would have multi classing.

And there is also Adept feat ... or it isnt there for Bard? O_o

I know Larian makes "classless" systems in their other games. D&D doens't work like that, and many Origin characters have classes tied to their backstory. How would Wyll the Rogue work, or Shadowheart the Wizard?

If Larian wants to allow the origins to switch classes, I think that fixing the first level of each origin class as the default, and waiving the requirements for multi-classing would be the way to go. So every Origin would always have 1 level in their default class which can't be changed or removed, but you could change up their future levels.

Honestly, I still don't get this argument. Aside from one line of dialogue being that Boo is his animal companion and that he's good with animals, the Ranger does not adequately represent Minsc at all.
Mechnically Ranger do not fit with Minsc.
He's a melee character, who uses big heavy weapons. Rangers can't even take the great weapon fighting style (Sersiously, this still pisses me off, not every Ranger has to be Drizzt).
From the mechanics of the character and his history only Barbarian truly represents Minsc. He's 100% a berserker. Hell, this is demonstrated both in "Heroes of Baldur's Gate" and "Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy".

I think if we need to keep the whole ranger thing going, just having the Berserker lodge have a rank of Ranger, resolves all canonical issues with his class. Now if only Jim Zub would stop trying to push him into the class without using any of the ranger class features that would be great.