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

I mean, I see your point but you can already make Shadowheart a druid or monk via multiclassing. It's bad enough that you can also make her any other class just as easily and I would personally leave unrestricted multiclassing and removing that 1 cleric level to mods. Before someone asks 'but what's the difference if a mod does it and if it's a built-in feature?', I'll try to answer that too: It's a way for Larian to set respectable boundaries. That way they say "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar. This is our vision for her and if you choose to deviate from it somehow, the game may respond in incoherent and immersion-breaking ways." This is a message I'd respect. Class respeccing and the removal of multiclassing requirements is more like saying "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar but you know what, who cares, make her a barbarian or wizard if you want lol". I can understand that to some this is simply Larian being inclusive and wanting everyone to have fun, but to me this is them being a DM who can't say no even to suggestions that break the lore of their world.

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that when I open Kingmaker and ask "hey, Valerie has great stats for a Paladin, can I make her one?" and the game firmly says "NO", I have much more respect for it and its creative vision than for a game that lets me turn a githyanki soldier into a bard or remove all druid levels from a literal archdruid.

I'd like to say though that viewing it as a retcon didn't occur to me and it helps me see a perspective from which this is not so horrible. I liked how Deadfire handled this - each companion had a set of 3 lore-friendly class and multiclass options to pick from. This was a fine compromise that allowed some variety while keeping everyone restricted to options that made thematic sense for them.

I mean, I see your point but you can already make Shadowheart a druid or monk via multiclassing. It's bad enough that you can also make her any other class just as easily and I would personally leave unrestricted multiclassing and removing that 1 cleric level to mods. Before someone asks 'but what's the difference if a mod does it and if it's a built-in feature?', I'll try to answer that too: It's a way for Larian to set respectable boundaries. That way they say "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar. This is our vision for her and if you choose to deviate from it somehow, the game may respond in incoherent and immersion-breaking ways." This is a message I'd respect. Class respeccing and the removal of multiclassing requirements is more like saying "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar but you know what, who cares, make her a barbarian or wizard if you want lol". I can understand that to some this is simply Larian being inclusive and wanting everyone to have fun, but to me this is them being a DM who can't say no even to suggestions that break the lore of their world.

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that when I open Kingmaker and ask "hey, Valerie has great stats for a Paladin, can I make her one?" and the game firmly says "NO", I have much more respect for it and its creative vision than for a game that lets me turn a githyanki soldier into a bard or remove all druid levels from a literal archdruid.

I'd like to say though that viewing it as a retcon didn't occur to me and it helps me see a perspective from which this is not so horrible. I liked how Deadfire handled this - each companion had a set of 3 lore-friendly class and multiclass options to pick from. This was a fine compromise that allowed some variety while keeping everyone restricted to options that made thematic sense for them.

Class respeccing and the removal of multiclassing requirements is more like saying "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar but you know what, who cares, make her a barbarian or wizard if you want lol". I can understand that to some this is simply Larian being inclusive and wanting everyone to have fun, but to me this is them being a DM who can't say no even to suggestions that break the lore of their world.

That argument makes a lot of sense, certainly. It also makes me think of another way to think about reclassing companions.

"Hi, DM, you know that cleric NPC that we all love, well I've got this cleric build I've been dying to try out, would you consider turning your cleric into a rogue on our next campaign?"

Obviously much easier with humans than computers. I definitely understand the "this is the Larian BG3 Shadowheart. Modders will make theirs; this is ours" argument, and I think it's neat that Larian chose not to be too precious about their characters.

This thread reminds me of the "SE added a jump button" FFXIV thread.

Getting to 5E core is a bit of a journey, considering we stepped off that path so long ago. I suspect the biggest problem will be balance. Consider what happens once you return ranged weapons to what they used to be in 5E. Eldritch spear should mean 300 feet eldritch blast range. I'm pretty sure that will break just about any encounter in the game, because the AI just can't see that far. But then the AI gets those abilities too, and suddenly encounters might well begin to overlap.

I don't see Larian really changing their map layout approach, which means everything is so ludicrously compressed, which means 5E distances will almost necessarily get really weird. And to fix that, it's going to be necessary to compromise on the rules.

The point is, once we start changing the rules, the logic of encounters changes, and trying to fully grasp what each change does to each encounter across the game is sufficiently enormous that I can understand why Larian don't care much to support multiple different sets of rules. I imagine this would also be an enormous problem for a modder.

It certainly turned out more interesting than anticipated

Shadowheart isnt a devoted cleric of shar though. She's far too nice, doesn't commit ritual murder, and she never actually commutes with shar at night like a devoted cleric would.

So if Larian put a big fat warning up whenever you want to respec a companion away from their default class, letting the player know that they're breaking this particular character, then it's all good?

I think it's neat that Larian chose not to be too precious about their characters.

So if Larian put a big fat warning up whenever you want to respec a companion away from their default class, letting the player know that they're breaking this particular character, then it's all good?

But why bother having a poll if you're not going to examine the results?

That way they say "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar. This is our vision for her and if you choose to deviate from it somehow, the game may respond in incoherent and immersion-breaking ways." This is a message I'd respect. Class respeccing and the removal of multiclassing requirements is more like saying "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar but you know what, who cares, make her a barbarian or wizard if you want lol".

Getting to 5E core is a bit of a journey,

Wouldnt it be better to have option to reset her completely and optimize her for whatever build or combination you have on mind?