Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Party Size Discussion

As someone who works with customers daily let me just tell you. This. Doesn't. Work.

People don't care if they have been warned or not. If a game breaks beacuse it was built for 4 and you get 6 it will be Larian's fault. If it's too easy? Their fault. Cutscenes work wonky? Of course it's their fault. Didn't reach lvl 10 by the end of the game? All on Larian.

Even if the players get a popup window every 10min warning them the game was designed with 4 in mind they will ignore it and when faced with a bug will blame the developers.

So no, if they decided from the start we will have a party of 4 then changing it last minute is a terrible idea.

I saw it, thanks.

So you think Larian should include an untested option into the game. Did you miss the part in my post where I said that would be not be a normal thing for developers to do?

I am a story mode kinda guy. I also don’t have unlimited time to play, so more party members allow me to experience more of the game in the time I do have. I will start out on easy mode to experience the world, then after a few gameplays I will jack it up to hard.

Either way I would like 5 members, but I can live with four.

How about they just don't hard code in the 4 player requirement? Any time there would be something that needed to be limited to 4 for ease of balance or camera angles or whatever, just set everything up for the first four characters in a party and leave room in the code to change that variable from 4 to 6 and ignore the bugs that can happen from changing that variable. Then all it would take is for the modders to go hunt through and tweak the variables and maybe tweak camera angles, etc. Then it is on the mods/modders when things break, because they tweaked the values of the shipped code, not on Larian who had everything optimized when they shipped it.

Group skill check? Larian configures an open variable that say check first 4 character slots to see if a character has a higher chance. Modders can come in and switch it to first 6 character slots. This is an overly simplistic example, but it is a design philosophy that we have seen in other games with equally complex code. Bethesda games are a great example of this: by default most of their games allow only one or two followers, but one of the first mods that get created for their games are unlimited follower mods.

Personally, I think this is the best of both worlds, because again, Larian isn't 'responsible' for modders breaking into their house by tweaking variables. But they can be considerate to the modders and player base by leaving the door unlocked so to speak.

The issue (already mentioned several times in this thread, I assume) is that a party of four somewhat locks your party composition choice.
You need a frontline, a buffer/healer, an arcane caster and then you have a free slot.

So you generally have to choose between bard/rogue/warlock or any niche spec. Having a party of 5+, on the other hand, grants you way more freedom and nuance in your party composition.

Oh well, I suppose it's too late now, Larian did not listened/delivered on this matter in a two years, I seriously doubt they will in the next couple of months.

I would argue that DnD5e is very lax with party composition, plenty of folks did just fine with an atypical or homogeneous team. I have seen a 4 paladins run or even solo runs go through just fine. Multiple classes fit the archetypes you described if shoehorning your party members into strict roles is your thing, so that leaves plenty of room for freedom of choice.

Yeah, but as already argued in the past, it's not really a matter of NECESSITY as much of enjoying the variety.

Four slots feels incredibly restricting (borderline "suffocating") because once you pick for one of two roles you WANT, it leaves you with basically no freedom of how to fill the remaining two if you enjoy diversifying.

This if fair, if we are speaking about tabletop campaign. However, in this case you have a DM that can tweak each encounter (either social or combat). And, to be honest, i do agree with you; i partecipated in campaign/oneshot where we played with no front line, full barbs party, etc.

That being said, we are not speaking about a live campaign but a pre-established one (where you can’t change stuff on the go). I’d be baffled if we won’t encounter situations where we need* to have an arcane caster, for example. Likewise, i can’t imagine to play with no front line without abusing/cheesing the AI.

* “Need” meaning not in the sense that you can’t complete the game, but meaning that, should you not have one in your party, the resolution/outcome would be miserable, you can’t access some area and so on.


At any rate, this is just another issue related to the party number limitation, but i already given up on that (sigh).

Eeh, I can't say this problem hit me. In single player, I can always swap my party in the rare occasions I want to diversify. Is there a stealth mission? Astarion is in. Do I need a better front line for this one? Laezel is there. More healing? Shadowheart it is, and so on. Hirelings will most likely guarantee that you will be able to pick any class and any race at any time in a playthrough.
The few multiplayer games I made, we just imposed ourselves not to pick duplicate classes and it worked fine every time. But to be fair multiplayer is basically a different game.
I can see your point making sense at higher difficulty since that often forces players to pick a very optimal composition, therefore forcing you to have key classes and spells and leaving very little room to creativity. We will see once it gets introduced.

Seems unlikely you ever need any particular class to achieve something. Giving players multiple ways to approach things is one of their main design philosophies. Having the right class might give you an easier option though.

Unfortunately, if you don't have a frontline, then your squishies ALL become your frontline. Which I think we can all agree is bad. You can argue that a team of all wizards could account for this by all packing shield and other defensive/control spells, but then you are really cutting into their DPS and eating through their spell slots.

While I agree that there is a lot more freedom in building a party in 5e than there is in something like WoW. You still need some basic functions in order to be successful.

IF the game is done correctly, it should take into account that groups of 4 probably don't have all skills/approaches covered and thus offer more ways to achieve the parties goal. So in that case a party of just 4 would offer more replayability simply because you can just pick 80% of your party into the group taking the perfect solution in every case and instead just 50% forcing you to play in more variations to see it all. Basically you either prefer having variation in your 'mandatory core group + 2' or switching through the 3 companions next to your main - that's personal preference more than anything.

My feeling is for 5e 4 characters are the best feeling party composition when it comes to gameflow/gameplay. I understand the wish for 6, but especially if you have all your typical classes/roles it affects the gameplay into always having the right answer for the problem - which 5e doesn't really have at its core and it might take a bit of 'creative' problemsolving out of the game. I for example rather be not forced to have a primary spellcaster and/or cleric in the party like in other titles of this kind because I honestly hate both classes playstyles and don't want to even be bother with them if I can avoid them.

In other words - as long as I'm not forced to take a tank, a healer, a wizard and a rogue to be able to handle the game, I don't have any preferences if the party is 4 or 6 members. For me that is far more important for the quality of the game design than the size of the party.


On the other hand, as someone who has just so much time at hand and most likely won't play through the game more than twice in his life I would also prefer to see as much as possible of the companion stories at once... luckily I don't care about most of the NPCs so far, so maybe I will be able to see all those I care for even in a single playthrough XD

I don't know if you are referring to TT as I only play PC games but to me 'frontline' and 'squishies' are concepts rather than realities. Classes in 5e have so much overlap that there are generally options for filling a role. Add to that the fact that you don't always get to enter the combat with you 'frontline' at the front
In BG3 Shadowheart can do the locks/traps (at least in EA), in Solasta I use a Ranger for the role. Bards were generally viewed as a viable alternative to Rogues but I don't know if that has changed in 5e. To be honest I view Rogues as redundant now. Their only selling point is sneak attack but that requires too much micro-managing for me and from what I've seen in LPs on YT they spend more time trying to manoeuvring than actually hitting anything.
My current Solasta party has a paladin, cleric and sorcerer who can all chuck out fireball. The sorcerer never bothers with Mage Armour of Stoneskin as her AC is pretty tasty with bracers and an amulet or ring. Ranger can do 3 attacks per round either with bow or DW. Her Spike Growth has won us more fights than Sneak Attack ever will. Her HP is the same as the pally's .
Cleric can do 2 attacks per round from level 8, uses a longsword (elf) and wears medium armour and shield. Shed load of useful spells including Guardian Spirits (or is it Spirit Guardians).
Pally, cleric and ranger all have healing spells.
The only real 'squishy' possibility is the wiz or sorcerer especially early game but Misty Step can get you out of the fray. Clerics can wear medium or heavy armour and rangers get medium armour prof.

My other, original, Solasta party is similar except for wizard instead of sorcerer and a different flavour of cleric (heavy armour but only one attack per round. Biggest downside I discovered with the new party is that sorcerers can't use the Identify spell nor can anyone else in the party.

How this party composition will fare in BG3 or if it will be possible remains to be seen. Ranger and sorcerer seems problematic at this point (please don't mention Minsc).

I haven't played Solasta, so I'm not sure which subclasses are available, but sure, at this point in 5e pretty much every class has a subclass that can take/dodge a few hits. Other than Swords Bard, BG3 doesn't have the subclasses that make it easy though (hexblade/bladesinger/etc.). I do doubt that you could leave your sorcerer up front adjacent to a group of hard hitting bugbears with goblin archer support and last long though, even if your paladin is in back throwing fireballs at things (which sounds suspiciously like multiclassing). Also, building a team based on access to a ton of powerful magic items isn't really how 5e is built.

The crux of my point isn't that you can't build a 4 person party of all evocation wizards and storm sorcerers, it's that that is something that isn't easy and takes a lot of planning and thought. You may be the greatest DnD player out there and could pull it off with ease, but min-maxing isn't something everyone is good at.

I never min-max it's far too much work and I don't consider myself an expert level player.

My pally gets the fire spells from her subclass. She still has a limited number of spells so doesn't stand hurling spells.
My sorcerer can indeed stand in the front line and without using dodge. Granted it's not every fight and not indefinitely but it's nowhere near as disastrous as it used to be.
If the magic items, and there aren't that many, are available I would be a fool to ignore them.
But as far as BG3 goes you may well be correct.

Even a bog standard classic foursome requires some planning and thought.

Well there is a difference between two sorcerers and two wizards vs a 'all spellcaster' party - druid, cleric, wizard and sorcerer are all primary casters. Add to the group bards and warlocks and you can easily setup a group of 4 primarily casters in 5e that will work. At the same time you could go without primary casters and it still is viable in 5e. Since you don't need designated healers or mages I would feal very confortable going with a ranger / paladin / druid / bard without min-maxing and playing with multiclasses for example with no worries because 5e isn't based as heavily on buffing and de-buffing as older editions. The system also doesn't truely support traditional MMRPG roles with tanks/healers/dps - you can't force enemies to attack tanks, healers don't heal efficiently, but there are control and dps builds to be fair.

Don't get me wrong you can create parties that will have a harder time, but its still far more forgiving than other systems.

First off, every bard I've ever played is personally offended by you leaving them off the primary caster list :p

Second, I agreed that 5e is more forgiving than games like WoW

Regarding your specific examples, I wouldn't ever label a Cleric as squishy, they are the only full caster that easily gets access to heavy armor and all martial weapons. Druids basically have access to massive amounts of temp hp (for now) with their wild shapes, so I wouldn't consider them particularly squishy either. I've seen both of those classes act as frontliners. In fact, all of the moon druids I've played with pretty much only considered themselves frontliners, including a multiclass 'bearbarian'.

I suppose to me squishy = d6 hit die and limited access to defensive measures that don't eat into their dps capabilities, though even some warlock and bard subclasses border on squishy.
Whereas a tanky frontliner isn't paying a huge dps cost to have rock solid defenses e.g. bear totem barbarians or shield bearing Paladins (especially since PAM works with 1h spears now)

I agree, bard is a primary caster

I see what you mean. Yet even then I guess its just about the way you build the party. For me going 2 sorcerers and 2 wizards is a bit extreme - its pushing the limits and even then I'm not a 100% sure it couldn't work using the right spells. But sub-optimal builds are always there and will have their issues. But like those you meantioned druids and clerics are already capable to be even front line tanks. A well distributed list of spells can also solve a lot of issues or in a primary fighter group the one or the other healing ability completely replace the need for clerics. So overall you can push it pretty far especially with some optimization. But any half-way 'balanced' list will most likely work pretty well without any need to go min-maxing - which is quite an achievement for a system

Agreed. I think we kind of derailed the convo though lol.

Back on topic, it seems like there are 10 companions when all is said and done, and I'd guess at least 7 of them can be swung around on the moral compass. That puts us at 16 different one on one relationships right from the start, which doesn't factor in all the interparty relationships that exponentially inflate the possible party dynamics (plus apparently the kill everyone option). With only 3 companions at a time really engaging with you (since most approval and commentary aren't happening in camp) that puts us at a minimum of 6 different playthroughs to see a decent chunk of party content. With 5 companions at a time, we can drop that down to 4ish with the benefit of seeing more interactions between party members.

Tactician mode seems like it would provide enough difficulty to cover the difference in party size, too. So my vote remains for a party size of 6.

About to pick up the game and start playing and have just been reading through stuff and watching videos. I don't play DnD so all the rules and mechanics will be new to me, although I am a lifelong RPG video gamer so I imagine I will be fine.

But the one thing that struck me as a began researching this is the sheer amount of builds and customization. It's endless. I just watched a 30 minute video with new subclasses. There is already a lot of classes. And subclasses. and now more subclasses. And they seem to be impactful not just for show or cosmetic. With so many types of builds and things to play around with , it seems a little sad to only be able to have 4 in a party.