Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Party Play - Pros and Cons

Fyi - answering all questions based on current state of the game.


I am at about 2,000 hours currently, most of those multiplayer.

The game takes between 8-15 hours to complete EA. It very much depends on the experience level of the players but you are looking at 2-3 sessions of 4-5 hours.

The majority of games started on the Larian Discord are not completed. Unless you have someone with some leadership ability, organizational ability, and persistence then the games just end when people get tired. (IMHO, this is where you and I come in)


PROS
1. Inventory, and cast bar are all customizable.
2. You can Lock your inventory if you feel you ever need to. This is a bit unfriendly but some people don't know how to ask.
3. TAB allows you to see the entire party and its inventory/character sheets, and so forth and hit K to see all your spells and abilities.
4. We now have a full reaction system in play
5. Putting a multiplayer group together is really easy - you can invite from your steam friends list or send out an invite code to specific players.
6. Each character has a lot of individual freedom to do what they want. This also means characters can work at cross purposes. You can go anywhere you want in act 1 on your own. You can attack and kill each other. You can steal from one another (even with locked inventory you just have to make the SoH check).
7. Surfaces are under control in Bg3 compared to DOS2.
8. You can kill almost everyone in ACt 1 - there are of course repercussions for this and likely even bigger ones down the road in the city but for now you can get away with a lot.
9. You have a lot of flexibility as to the degree of evil/good path you can follow.
10. The way Paladin and the Oathbreaker system is implemented is pure genius. "Oh no, I can't commit war crimes as a paladin?!"
11. They got rid of the exhaustion mechanic, makes Berserker Barbarians actually feasible as an option.
12. Your free-ranging fellow players can get you into a lot of trouble. "Oh, shit!" "What happened?!" "Ummm.." "Just tell me, who are we at war with now?" - It makes for unexpected scenarios.

CONS:
1. Cannot export characters
2. No DM mode and no idea if we will ever get it
3. No night and day cycle (it's only night when you go to camp to rest at end of day)
4. Shove as a bonus action (this should be a feat + shield)
5. Hide as a bonus action (only rogues should be able to do this)
6. Barrelmancy is less but it's still around.
7. UI still needs some work, Tuco is more the expert on this though.
8. We don't have ready action in game yet.




Hell yes, I have played pretty much every single class race combo, and I can't wait to get even more options, subclasses etc...

However, that is me, I have people that will only play a specific race/class combo. They really won't play anything else.

Extraordinarily High.
reason:
1. A multitude of branching story paths.
2. A multitude of character types, and subclasses, and races to play that will get reacted to differently.
3. I could probably build out a multi-stage diagram of Act 1 that shows the branching pathways of certain major choices but it would take some time.
4. At, 2,000 hours I am still finding new things I missed, or new class/race/cleric (religion) responses from the world.

Yes, Do a Githyanki Wizard for a more melee based frontline armored wizard (Evocation), A Deep Gnome back lines pure caster wizard (Evocation)and a Wood Elf/Drow High dex Abjurer (shields) stealthy wizard.
Although I would caution people against this sort of thing, it is doable. There are currently only 2 subclasses in EA for Wizards, but we get more on full release*. (Evocation and Abjuration)

We once did 4 Wild Magic Sorcerers in a run and we died A LOT. So many one shots by enthusiastic monsters. The lesson we learned was that you shouldn't multiply your weaknesses.

Also it's a bit easier to do this with Sorcerers because they share Charisma with Warlocks. Likely you have heard of the Sorlock build.

*As a side note apparently we will not have multiclass on release but it's supposed to be added later.