Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Need a party member selection screen

+1 from me as well; i had the exact same thought the last time i played.

It’s tedious to manage your party through dialogue, especially if you switch members frequently.

I can live without a party screen but please let us equip party members that are not currently recruited!!

I would like a simple 'Reform Party' tab accessible from one of the main sidebars.

I'd also prefer it to work exactly like it worked in BG1/2 - eg quickly allowing us to dismiss one companion to make room for another without a bunch of fuss.

A Dragon Age party selection scheme is fine I guess, though I don't know that they need to make it look like DA, when BG already had scheme that worked fairly well and was easy enough to grasp. Seems like they could allow us to 'call on an ally from camp' and just choose one from a drop down list via a Reform Party button without really needing an intermediate 'Avengers assemble' viewscreen.

Importantly I should also be able to quickly dismiss a corpse from the party, without requiring any additional dialog. Right now it's possible to get stuck with dead weight, since the 'go back to camp' option is handled through dialog rather than via the UI, like it should be.

In both the Pathfinder games when you are in one of your "hubs" you have permanent access to the inventory of all the recruited companions, active in your party or not.
They also usually mind their own business and you are asked to confirm the party formation only when you are leaving the area.

Simple. effective and it doesn't even require any particularly elaborate custom UI specifically for that goal.
Trust Larian for making simple things unnecessarily impractical/convoluted when it comes to UI, controls, etc.

Yes, I’m playing Kingmaker for the first time at the moment and agree that the way it makes all characters available to level up and tinker with their equipment while you’re at a hub is something I really appreciate. It would be great if it included the items stashed in your chest as well, but that’s not too hard to manage with the party inventory model.

+1 to everything above

Sadly, you are probably right here.

Yes, thank you! +1

That is the only situation in which current lack of QoL “party management” would make any sense.

Pretty much all party-based cRPGs have some system of party management where you can access everyone's models and inventory simultaneously, and rearrange your party composition: original BG games, NwN2, DA, PoE, Pathfinder. So BG3 not having anything along those lines is indeed yet another major way in which Larian has done a poor job with this game so far.

+1
Need this.

All those games let you change companions in and out all the time no matter what act the game is at. In bg 3 that wont be the case. So they think they don't need it just for one act.

My main feedback is that Larian should NOT kill/remove companions at the end of Act 1. At the very least, not arbitrarily "everyone not currently in your party dies" like in DOSII.

But if they are set in doing that, I still think it's necessary to add a party selection screen and/or the ability to access everyone's inventory while in camp, even if just for Act 1. Also, theoretically we can hire mercenaries in Acts 2&3, enabling us to have a party size that is larger than 4 and thus bringing back the need for everything discussed above.

Yes, I find it really hard to believe there's a way to get rid of all but a few companions all at the same time at the end of act one that's not going to feel really forced and artificial. At least the DOS2 shipwreck kind of made sense, but they can't pull that trick twice.

I have no problems with companions drifting away and going it alone at individual story-relevant points if you fail to help them, or they can't stand you. It would make sense for Lae'zel to take off if you don't head to the creche in good time, or Wyll if you fail to follow Mizora's trail, and we know Gale already has other possible irons in the fire if we don't feed him magic items.

Hopefully a forced focus on one party is an idea that Larian will dump in response to feedback. Or perhaps they'll come up with an absolutely compelling story for why and how the party gets whittled down and I'll eat my words, but they'd need to pull an absolute stunner.

And, as mrfuji3 says, even if we don't have more than three companions the indications are that we could have mercenaries that would make handling more than four possible party members a necessity either way.

I don't think Larian thinks that way. Or they woudn't say the things they did.

In short they can and they will IMO.
But i hope you are right...

They already said that we need to make a choices later down the line, Same thing was true for DoS 2. Apparently you have to make those choices in real life as well?!

Sorry buddy we are full. Away with you get yourself a new friends kind of thing.
Not sure where they got that idea from but ok.

How they kill off or get rid off those unwanted companions makes no difference to me. Even the best narrative wont make up for it, at least not for me.
Larian just has it's own look when it come to companions. Mayeb they are right some people like it, i guess it worked in DoS 2

Even in dialogues. They think just because companions have their lines back in the camp and banter, that this fully translates into their own personality. But at the same time you can take full control in that same playthrough, play as shadowheart push you MC in the background and play her completely opposite to her personality in the camp.

it's all part of their origins system. I belive it's here to stay for sure, because they believe it's the better way of doing IT. Same as the chains i guess.
Again like i said, hope you are right.


When it comes to party screen, maybe the current dialogue companions swapping is just a place holder. On the other hand more than one rpg uses it, so who knows. Good luck is all i can say. I don't swap companions that often to be a problem. But you have my support for what it's worth. Because every saved clicks is good in my book.

This is not directed at you, but rather wholly at Larian.

I am so very tired at this point of seeing someone "hope" that some bad/aggravating/silly/stupid design aspect of BG3 is "just a place holder" that will be "fixed" in the final game. It's been more than three years since the start of EA, and I for one no longer hold any "hope" of anything just being a place holder unless Larian has the decency to come forward and officially say so. Larian's stubborn unwillingness to communicate with us even for simple politeness-sake even if not substantively has really done wonders to alienate me from them. I have never felt more alienated from an RPG developer than I feel right now towards Larian. Not even EA-owned Bioware has ever been this bad.

Early access launched October 6th, 2020. That's 1 year, 10 months, 3 weeks, 1 days ago. Not over 3 years.

For the rest; Completely valid 😊

Okay. Perhaps I should've said "since BG3 was announced/revealed."

1 year 10 months, 3 weeks, 2 days ago doesn't change anything about the whole point. Anyway no way to know what is a place holder, maybe they should type it on hehe

If you look at youtube you can see how much more feedback there was for DoS 2 from their end compared to now. When you need money desperately i guess that changes things.

Won't this be a moot point once the full game launches... because I'm praying to the old gods that we "do not" have the painful BioWare stamp collection of companions following us around (meta gaming which sod gets the gift)... and instead have to make the hard choices of actually choosing who we keep for the whole game more or less (like old BG 2)... or even have companions just leave due to alignment issues. So hoping selection panel "is not needed".