Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: Replacing companions' starter class

It screws up dialog options to replace it, so I'm more likely to multiclass then replace it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there people arguing against this option who also argue for an option to increase party size? Where the argument is that 4 party members is too restrictive? That if it’s optional, no one who doesn’t want it has to use it? And if it breaks the game a bit it would be fine to just having a warning?

The two seem pretty similar to me. It’s a bit of flexibility for people who are happy to sacrifice a bit of story cohesion for the sake of having the party composition they want (unless they’ve made it actually make sense).

I certainly won’t use it on my first play through, but might think about it if I play again having already seen the story and want to try different classes. But even that might depend on what happens in the story.

They really aren't.

Preach.

That's fair, you want the game to be good, but a button you will never click will not make the game worse. About your question, no I don't think so. Classes are a set of mechanical features to me. When I want to play an half-orc shaman worshipper of the violence of nature, fire and storms, great lord of war, I know that the druid is not about that, but it's also the best fitting class to make it work. The sorcerer could work it well too probably. Reflavouring is something that I do often. On top of that 5e is a game that I love, but I vastly prefer classless games like World of Darkness or Call of Chtulhu.


It's a little play pretend. On one side you can think "sha has always been a rogue worshipper of shar, she never changed", on the other side you can find Zybilna across the road and make a wish "I want to be a rogue and forget everything about divine spells!". Is that so impossible in Faerun?

There's a story reason for the 4 man party limit? Please elaborate. Apart from companions going "it seems there's quite a few of you already" when you try to recruit them with a party of 4 already, I haven't encountered anything to suggest it.

The first and most obvious would be that this is what they were used to with DOS 1 and 2 (and let's be real, it's not like they ever made even the faintest attempt at worrying to resemble BG2 more closely to begin with).

The second could probably be that on an intimate level they must be already aware that their control scheme blows unwashed asses even when dealing with just four characters, let alone managing six.

I guess not, only 7 years of encounter design and many triggers and PC's placements all over the whole word. Something small and easy to change on the fly.
That said, I'd be favorable to this option if it was proposed. Every option is a good option.

Personally I just assumed it's because this is Baldur's Sin: Original Gate 3 AKA they're still using the D:OS2 engine where they also had this limitation. Dagless seemed to imply there's a narrative reason for the party size though, unless I'm missreading him.

I didn't get that, sorry. I'd give my point of view, but I guess discussing about party size is greatly off-topic since there is a mega already about it.

How so?

It would be entirely optional. It would allow more flexibility for people who want it. It might kind of break the game a bit, but that’s something some people would be OK with.

Looks very similar to me.

This has nothing to do with engine limitation. It’s a design choice, it’s easier to balance a game around 4 characters than 6. Same reason BioWare moved from 6 to 4.

Larian actually said they made sure that the engine supports more characters and it’s very easy to mod this, though that will trivialize the difficulty somewhat since the encounters are designed around 4 character parties.

Sorry, I don’t want to get off topic. I’m just saying that the arguments for wanting one option would seem to apply largely to this one.

Well, its not writers im arguing with ...
And since writers most likely are co-working with developers, deciding how to implement theese characters to made them fluid enough to any class ... one could easily asume they are fine with it.

Was it tho?
I understand why would you asume that ... but that dont make it true.

Yes ...
Except, according to what he tells us, as we progress in his personal quest ... aka, according to what Writers told us about him ... he didnt do either of those things.

He was coming on public events and seducing people.

Bard =/= music ... that is only one of many potential archetypes, but its common misstake, even Larian made it ... kinda.
And their magic can be quite subtle.

Yes, but did he become any less Roguish?
Is the expressive power gone out of sudden?

He is still the in every aspect ... except he dont have to be, if you dont want him to.

I would agree with you ...
If that would be true.

If our Origin companions / characters would have predefined set of classes and subclasses, in wich we can invest levels and raise their skills in certain ways only ... with multiple options, why not ... if they would just not let us do anything the hells we want with them.

If Astarion, as we are talking about him ...
Would be only able to get levels in either Fighter, Ranger, or Monk via multiclass ... maybe even having locked out Arcane Trickster, Eldrich Knight and Elemental Monk ... bcs there is nothing magical about him.
Then i would agree with you completely.
For such Astarion, his Class would indeed be ... as you said it "integral component of his character".

But as long as i can make Astarion 11Paladin 1Rogue.
And as long as i can play him as benevolent sweetheart that is selflessly helping anyone in need.

It dont feel that way.

As long as i can do anything i want with him (and i can) his class in not commitment for me, it is meere sugestion, even if that single insignificant level remains there ...
And that is reason i see it insignificant, and more than something truly special that defines the companion, its just minor anoyance for me, that dont allow me to reach full battle potential of my companion.

Since the integrity is allready compromised and holds together only when player commits themselves to uphold it?
Yes, it is ... since there is barely anything left to sacrifice.

And believe it or not, i care aswell.

I think this is it - this right here may be the important difference in viewpoint. Not only yours and mine, but of those who argue for the lenient ruling and against it.

Classes were never 'just' the mechanics to me. Each feature with any amount of flavour adds to the character's story and makes me imagine the things about their past it reflects, how they came to posses it, what situations it could've helped them in. Even in classless systems a skill usually represents something the character spent a lot of their time developing and changing it on a whim is cheap. It's one of many reasons why I personally didn't enjoy the story in DOS2, I just couldn't take it seriously and I worry the same will happen here if the system moves more toward disconnecting its mechanics from its story.

A party of 4 is not a Larian thing but a 5e one. 4 is the reference party size and the whole system is balanced around it. Adjustments can be made, of course, but this is the default recommendation.

There's a story reason for Astarion to be Rogue? Please elaborate.

And when you are in it ...
Feel free to share stories of any or all others.

And by that i mean stories that are official, not "Gale told us he was a Wizard, so he have to be a Wizard" kind of stories.

For what its worth ...
Not just you.

We seem to be moving a bit away from the purpose of this thread, so I'll try bring it back by mentioning the current poll results and refer people to the Party Size Megathread for the countless arguments for/against an increased party size.

56% of people (39 votes) dislike the ability to change companions' starting classes.
20% of people (14 votes) like the ability to change companions' starting classes.
24% don't care (17 votes) and thus don't count toward either side.
In summary, more than 2x the number of people here dislike this aspect of BG3 than like it.

A survey with 70 recipients has a 95% confidence level with a 12% margin-of-error and can be generalized to effectively any population size. (using this calculator).
- disclaimer: I'm not sure if the above is only relevant for 2-option surveys. If it is, then we consider only the 53 yes-or-no results, giving us a 14% margin-of-error.

Thus, if we assume our sample population is roughly representative of the Full Population, we can, with 95% confidence, expect the Full Population's response to vary by up to 12-14% from these poll results. (i.e., only 5% chance that more than 34% of people would respond "like" and less than 42% of people would respond "dislike.") If we *don't* assume that the forum sample roughly accurately reflects the full population of BG3 players, then we can't use this poll to say anything and it's basically useless.

But this is all fair and right. You can have all the reasons of this world to not like something, and the same is for me. It's about having different backgrounds, different preferences and different everything.

If you don't like something is fine.
If Larian looks around and decide "this thing isn't liked by enough people, it isn't worth it" is fine.
What I can't consider fine is saying "larian shouldn't implement this because I don't like it".
It's vastly different.

From a studio that prides itself on narrative design and the intricacy of characters, their backstories, and resolutions, it's sort of comical that they would upend any character consistency and narrative design by essentially allowing complete respec of characters whose stories were literally designed around their class (with a couple exceptions). Making more Origin stories is a likely non-starter here since they are all fully voiced by VAs, and were probably incredibly expensive to produce.

What they should have done was design a few characters whose stories were classless, so that excludes Wyll, Shadowheart, Gale, Jaheira from the onset here, but all of the characters to a degree are defined by their class choices. Astarion would prowl the night in the city capturing victims for his master, this is a Rogue. Karlach was a frontline soldier in the Blood War, I don't see a non-martial class doing this, Wyll made a pact with a fiend, Shadowheart directly states she worships Shar and not just as someplace she goes on Sunday but actively runs missions on her behalf, Gale literally says he wants to be the greatest WIZARD in Faerun. Sure, there are some, SOME, gray areas on a couple of the characters, Astarion perhaps and Lae'zel, until you realize that Githyanki culture is primarily martial, almost Gish-heavy, which is in line with her class, Halsin is literally an Archdruid, how are you going to swing that one? It's a prominent feature in the story. "Oh, you were an Archdruid 10 minutes ago, but now, while on the road with the party, you have become....A SORCERER. Yes, no massive destruction of storytelling there.

Minthara's culture is literally gender-specific, women are generally clerics, men are fighters and wizards. Sure, there might be a rogue here and there, but there are no Drow Druids, at least Lloth Drow Druids.

So yeah, this is another example of a massive change shore-horned into the game as we sprint to the finish line, just like many of the other things we've seen. The main problem with it is it literally slams, and I mean slams, up against the whole notion of character development, narrative, consistency, and base storytelling, which is one of the primary, if not the omega, selling point of this game at this point since it waved bye bye to tabletop observance and mechanical fidelity.

I mean sure, you CAN do it, and now you have the party you want while still keeping the companions around, but from a storytelling perspective, this would be akin to Tolkien suddenly saying that Samwise is now considered an Ishtari, or that Aragorn is a bard. The characters motivations, backstory, and experiences are predicated on a sense of identity, and Larian decided to make those identities closely tied to, in many cases, race and class. They could have written them differently, Kivan in High Hedge could have been a Rogue, his story was one of revenge against Tazok. Coran could have been just about anything as his goal was to obtain a Dragon head. You see what I mean here? Their backstories weren't gated along racial and class-based lines, but Larian chose to go that route and now, again, at the 11th hour they decided that we can completely upend those stories for gameplay convenience in a genre, and by a developer, that prides itself on storytelling and character development.

This isn’t just optional. It’s super optional. There is no mechanical advantage to reclassing characters at all. You can creat the exact same builds on any of the hirelings. So it isn’t even an option where there is some incentive you might have to reconcile with missing out on.

It is only here for people who want it, and can be completely ignored by those who don’t. That’s perfect.

@zanos, this wasn’t added at the 11th hour, Swen said this would be in the final game 3 years ago when the EA launched. Every complaint you have can be mitigated by three words: “don’t use it.”

I will be changing Minsc’s class every time I play a new campaign. Mostly as a barbarian, but I will do one novelty playthrough where he is a wizard and I will do this because he won’t be acting like a wizard at all. It’s awesome Larian gives people like me this option, as it wasn’t hard to program, so why not?